Americanist art historian; first associate director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Abbott was born to Arthur Abbott and Flora Parkman (Abbott). After attending Dexter High School, Abbott graduated from Bowdin College with a bachelor's degree in science and attended graduate school at Harvard University in physics. At Harvard he met Alfred H. Barr, Jr., who would become the first director of the Museum of Modern Art. Barr and Abbott spent time in Paris studying art.
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Art educator and theorist, applied Marxist and psychological approaches to his interpretations of art. Sponsored by Barnes Foundation to study in France. Taught: Antioch College, 1925-27; Acadia University (Canada), 1928-43; Michigan State University, 1943-56.
Psychiatrist and disciple of Freud; earliest scholar to employ psycho-analytic method to an artist (Giovanni Segantini). Abraham was born into a wealthy, cultured, Jewish family. His father, Nathan Abraham, initially a Hebrew religion teacher, and his mother were first cousins. Karl Abraham rejected religion early in his life. His early interests in philology and linguistics lead to a life-long interest in humanities. After homeschooling, he entered medical school in 1896 at the universities in Würzburg, Berlin and finally Freiburg im Breisgau.
Architect and historian of medieval building, noted for his assertion that Gothic architecture's system of ribbed vaulting was unnecessary for structural reasons. Abraham served as a soldier in World War I. After the war, he worked on the reconstruction of monument destroyed by the war in the north of France. He trained in the architectural studio of Pascal et Recoura at the Ecole des beaux-arts in Paris, graduating in 1920. He further studied at the l'Ecole du Louvre between 1921 and 1924.
Art Historian and scholar of Sicilian art and decorative arts, Director, Museo Nazionale di Messina (1949-1966). Maria Accascina was born in Naples in 1898 to a family originally from Palermo. Accascina moved to her family’s city, Palermo, to study Literature. After graduation she went to the Regia Scuola di Perfezionamento in Storia dell’Arte Medievale e Moderna dell’Università di Roma. At this time, she studied under Adolfo Venturi who assisted her with her thesis on medieval goldsmithing.
Gérôme and 19th-century French art scholar. Ackerman graduated from the University of California, Berkeley in 1952 with a B.A. He moved to Munich where he studied at the Maximillien University under Hans Sedlmayr between 1956-1958 before returning to the United States where he began teaching as an art history lecturer at Bryn Mawr. He received his MFA at Princeton University in 1960, continuing for his Ph.D. in 1964 with a thesis, written under Erwin Panofsky and Rensselaer W.
Architectural historian and professor of Fine Arts, Harvard University, 1960-1990. Ackerman's father, Lloyd Stuart Ackerman (1882-1968), was a prosperous San Francisco attorney and his mother, Louise Sloss (Ackerman) (1888-1983), was later a librarian at the San Francisco Museum of Art (today the SF Museum of Modern Art). Art as a child, he was exposed to art when his family toured European museums in 1932. At age 15, he read Vision and Design by Roger Fry, which opened him to the formal interpretation of art.
Canadian Architectural historian; wrote most complete study to date on Gothic vaulting systems. Acland was born in Toronto in 1917 and graduated from Syracuse University, New York, in 1942 with a B.A. in Architecture. Immediately afterwards, Acland joined the Canadian army, then fighting World War II. During his military service, which lasted from 1942 to 1945, Acland worked on the design of factories as well as with Canadian Army Photo Intelligence. Following the war he attended Harvard University where he obtained an M.A. in Philosophy in 1952.
Social historian, novelist; author of a book on medieval architecture. Adams' parents were the diplomat and congressman Charles Francis Adams, Sr. (1807-1886) and shipping heiress Abigail Brooks Adams (1808-1889); he was the grandson of President John Quincy Adams and great-grandson of President John Adams. Adams attended Dixwell School before Harvard College--an experience he valued little--graduating in 1858. Among his life-long friends he met at Harvard was the future architect Henry Hobson Richardson.
Historian of Nigerian art and director, Institute of African Studies, University of Ibadan. Adepegba attended graduate school at Indiana University, receiving his Ph.D. in 1976 in art history under the supervision of Roy Sieber. He pursued an active research agenda writing on a range of Nigerian art topics. His over 40 works include a paper on Nok terracottas, the Yoruba concept of art, and contemporary Nigerian art.
Burlington Magazine Joint Editor, 1914-1919. Adey initially worked translating of Scandinavian literature. He joined the circle of followers of Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), whose numbers included the writers Max Beerbohm (1872-1956) and Reginald Turner (1869-1938), the artist William Rothenstein and, most significant for Adey, Robert (Robbie) Baldwin Ross (1869-1918). He and Ross shared a house together for fifteen years. In 1900 the two joined the management of the Carfax Gallery in London.
Museum department director, print specialist and editor of the Gazette des Beaux-Arts (1956-1987); established a genre of art-historical research exploring the importance of classical culture to that of the Middle Ages. Adhémar was descended from a distinguished legal family of the French Midi (southern France). His father, a lawyer of the Cour de cassation (French Supreme Court), allowed his son to follow scholarship rather than study law.
Early friend and exponent of German Expressionist artists, taught art history at the Bauhaus. He was born in Karlsbad, Bohemia, which is present-day Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic. Adler was born to Therese (née Hirsch) and Mortiz Adler, both of Jewish descent. Adler’s father was a theater critic and socialist. Adler lived in Munich from 1917 onward, where he wrote his dissertation at that university the same year. His topic was the early development of the woodcut. In Munich he became familiar with the Blauen Reiter artists group and for whom he worked.
Architectural historian, architect and archaeologist; specialist in ancient excavations, and medieval German architecture. Adler attended the Berlin Kunstakademie beginning in 1841. In 1846 he continued at the University of Berlin (Bauakademie). From 1854 he taught there under Ferdinand von Arnim (1814-1856) and from 1859 as a Dozent for the history of architecture. He was made professor at the Akademie in 1861 succeeding in the position previously held by Wilhelm Lübke.
Art critic and historian of Italian renaissance. Cartwright was the daughter of Richard Aubrey Cartwright and Mary Fremantle (Cartwright) (d. 1885). She was privately schooled. Her earliest exposure to art may have come from her uncle William Cornwallis Cartwright (d.1915), an art collector, who allowed her early access to his library and gallery at Aynhoe, Northamptonshire. She toured France, Austria, and Italy with her family in 1868.
Earlier British writer, authored a history of art and artists' biography, 1685. Aglionby traveled the continent and recorded his recollections on art, among other topics. In 1685, Aglionby published his Painting Illustrated in Three Dialogues based heavily on the Vite de' pittori, scultori ed architetti moderni by Giovanni Pietro Bellori published in 1672. Aglionby, noted that in the Netherlands, paintings were common everywhere, even in the homes of tradesmen.
Numismatist and gem scholar. Agostini worked during the reign of Pope Urban VIII as the antiquarian to the Barberini family. His letters, written to the family while in exile (1646-50) today form a trove of information on the archaeological activity of the time. After the return of the Barberini, Agostini continued to collect for them, arranging their collection into one of the most comprehensible schemas of the time. He was appointed commissioner of collections under Pope Alexander VII, directing the excavations of the Roman Forum and baths near San Lorenzo in Panisperna.
Published the volume on Alcalá de Henares and Guadalajara, in the "Art in Spain" series by the Hispanic Society of America.
Byzantine iconographic scholar, pupil of N. P. Kondakov. Ainalov weighed in with the important Byzantinists Josef Rudolf Thomas Strzygowski and Charles Rufus Morey in contending that early Christian stylistic forms were drawn from western Asian sources and not principally Rome.
Merchant; art critic, poet; professor at the Amsterdam Rijksacademie, 1876-1889; central figure in the emancipation process of the Roman Catholics of the Netherlands. Alberdingk Thijm received no higher education. He initially went into business. In 1842 he began writing art criticism for De Spectator. He married Wilhelmina Anna Sophia Kerst in 1846. In 1852 he founded the Volks-almanak voor Nederlandse katholieken (The People's Almanac for Dutch Catholics), and in 1855 the Catholic periodical Dietsche Warande.
Egyptologist and art historian. Aldred was the son of Frederick Aldred and Lillian Ethel Underwood (Aldred). After attending the Sloane School, Chelsea, he studied English at King's College, London, and then art history at the Courtauld Institute of Art. While a student, he met Howard Carter (1874-1939), the archaeologist who discovered the Tutankhamun tomb, in 1933. He graduated from the Courtauld in 1936. In 1937 he became an assistant keeper (curator) at the Royal Scottish Museum, Edinburgh the institution he would remain for the rest of his life. He married Jessie Kennedy Morton (b.
Medievalist; manuscripts scholar New York University. Alexander edited the important Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in the British Isles beginning in 1975.
Dramatist whose works helped bring about the re-evaluation of Michelangelo. Alfieri was born to a noble and wealthy family. His father was Count Antonio Alfieri and his mother Monica Maillard de Tournonthe marquis di Cacherano of Savoy. Count Alfieri died when Vittorio was less than one year old. His mother married a third husband, the cavalier Giacinto Alfieri de Magliano. Vittorio was privately tutored under Don Ivaldi, a priest whose education was poor enough to move him in 1758 to the Military Academy of Turin.
Photo-documentarian, early participant of the Fratelli Alinari photoarchive together with his brothers. The son of an engraver, Alinari grew up in a Florentine art family. His older brother, Leopoldo Alinari studied with engraver Luigi Bardi and learned the emerging art of photography.
Photo-documentarian, founder of the Fratelli Alinari together with his brothers. The son of an engraver, Alinari grew up in a Florentine art family. Leopoldo studied with engraver Luigi Bardi and learned the emerging art of photography while training in the 1840s. In 1852 he established a studio in the Via Nazionale in Florence.
Archaeologist and historian of early British medieval iconography. Allen was the son of a landed Welshman, George Baugh Allen (1821-1898), a barrister (known as a "pleader") of the legal association ("Inner Temple") in Narberth, Pembrokeshire, Wales, and his mother, Dorothea Hannah Eaton (Allen) (d. 1868). Allen graduated from King's College School, London, in 1860 and Rugby School in 1863 before attending King's College, London between 1864 and 1866.
Art educator, museum curator and art historian; early exponent of postwar American art to the European public and coiner of the term "pop art." Alloway was the son of a bookseller. As a child he contracted tuberculosis which interrupted his formal education. While a teenager he wrote short "filler" book reviews for the Sunday London Times. He attended classes at the University of London Birbeck night college, but he never received a degree.
Historian of prehistoric art, museologist, archaeologist specializing in Levantine art. Almagro Basch was the son of a veterinarian Doroteo Almagro Sevilla (1860-1944) and Josefa Zapater (Basch). He began his studies at the Escuela de Tramacastilla and received his bachelor’s degree from the Colegio de los Padres Escolapios de Albarracín. He earned a scholarship at the Universidad de Valencia (1928-1930) and at the Universidad de Madrid where he was granted a degree in Filosofia y Letras (Philosophy and Letters) in 1932 and in Derecho (Law) in 1934.
Historian of Russian art, particularly the traditional Russian art forms of medieval, renaissance and 18th and 19th centuries. Responsible for general histories of art reflecting the ideals of the Soviet period and several histories of Russian art. Professor at the Theatre and Architecture institutes (Moscow University) and the Academy of Art. Associated with Oskar Wulff, Viktor Mikitich Lazarev and N. I Brunov.
Scholar of Dutch baroque art; professor of History of Art, UC Berkeley,1962-1994; exponent of the "new art history." Born Svetlana Leontief, she graduated from Radcliffe College with a B.A. in 1957. She married the following year, assuming her husband's surname of Alpers. She continued graduate work in art history at Harvard University publishing an article on Vasari's verbal descriptions of art (ekphrasis) in 1960 in the Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, which announced her innovative approach to art history.
Specialist in classical Greek and Roman art. Alscher studied under Ernst Buschor at Munich, and was charged with reorganizing the Archaeological Institute at the University of Jena after World War II in 1945. In 1951, he moved to a professorship at the Humboldt University in (East) Berlin, where he was named an ordentliche (full) Professor in 1953. Published a four-volume history of the development of Greek sculpture, that was influenced by his training in the analysis of forms.
Specialist in ancient Greek sculpture; director and rebuilder of the German Archaeological Institute in Rome after World War I, 1921-1927. He was born in Stettin, Germany, which is present-day Szczecin, Poland. Amelung's father was a successful insurance executive and his mother an actress. The younger Amelung studied under the classicist Erwin Rohde (1845-98) in Tübingen and briefly under Johannes Overbeck at Leipzig, before settling in Munich to write his dissertation under Enrico Brunn.
Corinthian vase painting scholar; co-founder of the History of Art department at the University of California, Berkeley. Amyx attended Stanford University where he received a B. A. in classics in 1930. His graduate work was done at Berkeley. An M.A. in Latin was granted in 1932 (with a thesis on Juvenal). He was a fellow at the American School in Athens for 1935-36. His Ph.D., in Latin and classical archaeology was awarded in 1937. His dissertation, on Eritrean black-figure painting, was written under H. R. W. Smith.
iconography
Chair in art history at the University of Milan; student of A. Venturi in Rome
Photo-documentarian, founder of the Anderson photoarchive. Born Isaac Atkinson, Anderson was raised in Cumberland, England and settled in Rome in 1838. His intention was to be a painter and, under the signature Nugent Dunbar, submitted several works to the exhibition of the Select Society, London, in 1839. In addition to his paintings and watercolors, he periodically sent back drawings for British newspapers. He switched to photography in 1853 after experimenting with the medium for a number of years.
Practicing architect, teacher of and author on Greek and Italian architecture. Anderson was born in Dundee, Scotland, to James Anderson, a tea dealer, and Margaret Steel (Anderson). In his early years he had limited access to artistic and architectural education. That which he did get was primarily through office routine and private reading. In 1877 he became an apprentice to the architect James Gillespie (1854-1914) of St. Andrews. He subsequently moved to an office in Dundee, and ultimately to Glasgow by 1888, where he worked as a draftsman with Thomas Lennox Watson (1850-1920).
Classical art scholar and director of the DAI, 1984-. Andreae graduated from the university at Marburg in 1956, where he studied under Friedrich Matz (1890-1974). His thesis focused on the iconography of patrimony in Roman sarcofagi. Between 1956 and 1959 he was assistant professor at the DAI or German archaeological Institute in Rome contributing frequently to the Archaeologische Anzeiger.
Compiler of famous nineteenth-century catalogs of artist and monogram. His unpublished Lexikon der Nürnberger Künstler inspired the work of Ulrich Thieme and Felix Becker for their 37-volume work of the twentieth century.
Early discoverer that Greek architecture had been brightly colored. Angell studied architecture at the Royal Academy in London. He and another architectural student, William Harris (d. 1823) went to Sicily to find evidence for colored architecture among ancient Greek monuments. They excavated temple C, the main temple, at Selinus (Seliunte). Both men were among the circle of the architect C. R. Cockerell, who had visited Sicily and made archaeological digs in the 1810's. Neither Angell nor Harris secured permission to excavate.
Historian and critic of Spanish colonial art and culture. Angulo Iñiguez received his undergraduate at the University in Seville in History in 1920. In 1922 he was awarded his Ph.D. from the Universidad Central de Madrid for a thesis on the Renaissance goldsmiths of Seville. He began his career in Seville, where he studied the archives of the Indies. In 1930 he published his dissertation on Andalusian sculpture and established the Laboratorio de Arte Americano (Laboratory of American Art).
Scottish author and art theorist and connoisseur. Anstruther-Thomson was born into an aristocratic family; her father was John Anstruther-Thomson of Charleton and Carntyne (1818-1904), and mother Caroline Maria Agnes Robina Hamilton-Gray (Anstruher-Thomson) (1833-?). Independently wealthy, she pursued a career first as an artist studying at the Slade School of Art and that in Paris under Carolus Duran until 1889.
Marxist/social-history art historian. Antal was born to a wealthy Jewish family. His father, Alajos Antal, was a medical doctor and his mother was Sofia Gerstl. The younger Antal completed a law degree in Budapest and then continued there as well as Freiburg and Paris to study art history. In studied in Berlin under Heinrich Wölfflin and then in Vienna under Max Dvořák. He received his doctorate in art history in 1914 writing his thesis under Dvořák on neoclassical and Romantic French painting.
Director of the Koninklijk Museum (later Rijksmuseum), Amsterdam. He advised the Baltimore collector Robert Gilmor, Jr. on purchases.
Italianist art historian; Arasse graduated from the École normale supérieure in 1965 in Classics. He entered the Sorbonne initially studying Italian Renaissance art under André Chastel on St. Bernardino of Siena. He switched to École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS) under the direction of Louis Marin.
Modernist. Art historian of Bolognese and Emilian art from the fourteenth century to the contemporary; critic. Arcangeli was born to Adolfo and Maria Villani. He was one of four siblings, all of whom were creative. Gaetano was a poet and humanities professor, Nino was a musician, and Bianca was a painter. Arcangeli began his studies at the University of Bologna in 1933 where he studied under the respected art historian and critic Roberto Longhi, Professor of Art History and chair in History of Medieval and Modern Art.
Historian of art, educator, and curator who specialized in art of the Caribbean. Born in Great Britain to Jamaican parents, Archer-Straw attended the University of the West Indies in 1975 where she completed her B.A. in Theology, History, and Sociology in 1978. She also trained in visual arts at the Jamaica School of Art from 1979 to 1982, receiving a diploma in painting. She went on to receive a M. Phil in Cultural History (1983-1987). She later gained her M.A.
Historian of art, educator, and curator who specialized in art of the Caribbean.
Art critic and writer, collaborator with Vasari; his Letters form a proto-art history. Aretino's father was a shoemaker, known as Luca del Tura. Aretino himself trained both as a writer and an artist. After time in Venice and Siena, Aretino was in Rome by 1517 where he was attached to the household of Agostino Chigi (1466-1520). There he met Sebastiano del Piombo and Jacopo Sansovino, Raphael, and Michelangelo. He was briefly in the circle of Pope Leo X (1475-1521). Aretino was frequently associated with political tracts, satires and illustrated erotica.
Marxist art historian, professor at University of Rome 1959-1976; specialist in Italian art. Argan's father, Valerio Argan, was an administrator of a women's mental hospital and his mother, Libera Roncaroli, a primary school teacher. An uncle's subscription to the journal La Critica, founded by Benedetto Croce, introduced the ideas of that art philosopher to Argan at a young age. He attended the Liceo Classico Cavour in Turin where the classes of the young Giusta Nicco Fasola instilled a passion for art.