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Alfieri, Vittorio

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Alfieri, Vittorio

Gender: male

Date Born: 1749

Date Died: 1803

Place Born: Asti, Piedmont, Italy

Place Died: Florence, Tuscany, Italy

Home Country/ies: Italy

Subject Area(s): Italian (culture or style), Italian Renaissance-Baroque styles, and Renaissance

Overview

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. Alfieri heard his first opera in 1762 in Turin and thereafter became a devotee. He studied civil and canon law in 1762, achieving a law degree in Turin in 1766. In 1776 he became an ensign in the provincial regiment of Asti. His first language was French, in which he kept a diary. Alfieri left the military academy, taking a grand tour of France, England, and Holland for three years (1766-1768). Accompanied by an English tutor, he traveled to Milan, paying a visit to the Ambrosian Library, to Florence and its art galleries and churches, which left him cold, although Michelangelo’s tomb in Santa Croce he found compelling. Alfieri proceeded to France and the French theater. He was formally received at Versailles where Louis XV simply stared at him, and Prussia of Frederick the Great, “the infamous trade of soldier, the most infamous and sole basis of all arbitrary authority.” In 1771 in Paris, he declined to meet Jean Jacques Rousseau, but purchased a thirty-six volume collection of Italian authors, many of whose names he had never heard. He had never seriously read Dante, Petrarch, Ariosto, Boccaccio, or Machiavelli. Alfieri’s few friends included Francesco Gori Gandellini, a wealthy and erudite merchant interested in literature and history. While traveling in England, Alfieri fell in love with Penelope Pitt, wife of Lord Ligonier. The love affair ended in a duel with the lady’s husband and the divorce of the Lady. Alfieri’s first play, Cleopatra, was staged in Turin in 1775. Cleopatra was acclaimed for its vigorous and original style, and when its popularity soared. In 1777, he fell in love with Louise Stolberg, countess of Albany, wife of the pretender Charles Edward Stuart, the last of the English Stuarts. In 1784 she obtained a legal separation. Alfieri and countess remained together for the rest of Alfieri’s life. Four of his tragedies were printed in Siena in 1782, and six more toward the end of the same year. In 1787, Alfieri returned to France to supervise the printing of the complete edition of his tragedies, now numbering nineteen, by the publisher Didot. Although at first a supporter of the Revolution he quickly changed when observing the mob violence. Alfieri spent the last ten years of his life in Florence. The city was occupied in 1796 by French troops. He directed and acted in a few plays. Alfieri is buried in the church of Santa Croce in Florence in a tomb designed by Antonio Canova, near Michelangelo and Machiavelli.

Sources

Kultermann, Udo. The History of Art History. New York: Abaris, 1993, p. 124; Gantner, Joseph. Michelangelo: Die Beurteilung seiner Kunst von Lionardo bis Goethe. Beiträge zu einer Ideengeschichte der Kunsthistoriographie. Ph.D, dissertation, Munich, 1922; The Life of Vittorio Alfieri, Written by Himself. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1953.

Alinari, Giuseppe

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Alinari, Giuseppe

Other Names:

Giuseppe Alinari

Gender: male

Date Born: 1836

Date Died: unknown

Place Born: Florence, Tuscany, Italy

Home Country/ies: Italy

Subject Area(s): documentary (general concept), documentary photographs, documentary photography, documentation (activity), photodocumentation, photographs, and site documentation

Overview

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. After Leopoldo established a photography studio in 1852 in Florence, Giuseppe joined him together with his brother, Romualdo (1830-1891) renaming the venture “Fratelli Alinari, Fotografi Editori.” Giuseppe and Romualdo managed the business while Leopoldo traveled, photographing monuments in Rome, Florence, Naples, Pompeii and elsewhere in Italy. By the 1860s Fratelli Alinari were receiving commissions for photo documentation. Prince Albert of Britain commissioned them to photograph the drawings of Raphael in Florence, Vienna and Venice. The business expanded to a portrait studio and then publishing firm. After Leopoldo’s death, the remaining brothers expanded Alinari subjects to document daily life in Florence, which was then the seat of government for Italy. Alinari photographs form a core of historic images of art historical monuments, some of which were subsequently destroyed or “restored” from their original use. The photographs also capture architecture in an environment more contemporary to its original than modern images do.

Selected Bibliography

[no bibliography]

Sources

“Photographs” (Letter from Italy). Burlington Magazine 79 (May 1964):427-8; International Center of Photography. Encyclopedia of Photography. New York: Crown Publishers, 1984, pp. 22-24; Zevi, Filippo, ed.. Alinari: Photographers of Florence, 1852-1920. London: Alinari Edizioni/Scottish Arts Council, 1978; Gli Alinari Fotografi a Firenze 1852-1920. Florence: Fratelli Alinari Editrice, 1985.

Contributors: Lee Sorensen

Allen, J. Romilly

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Allen, J. Romilly

Other Names:

John Romilly Allen

Gender: male

Date Born: 1847

Date Died: 1907

Place Born: Regent's Park, London, England, UK

Place Died: London, Greater London, England, UK

Home Country/ies: United Kingdom

Subject Area(s): archaeology, iconography, and Medieval (European)

Overview

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. He made his living as a civil engineer, first as an engineer-in-chief to the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board, London, and then, in 1870, as a resident civil engineer to the railways construction project for Baron Julius de Reuter (1816-1899). He supervised the docks building at Leith, near Edinburgh, Scotland, and at Boston, Lincolnshire, in England. Allen used his leisure time to study archaeology, especially pre-Norman art and artifacts. While employed in Leith, he visited various Scottish archaeological sites. In 1873 he published an initial article in the journal of the Cambrian Archaeological Association, Archaeologia Cambrensis. Allen became a member of the association in 1875 and elected fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland in 1883. In 1885 presented the lecture, “Early Christian Symbolism in Great Britain and Ireland before the Thirteenth Century,” as the SAS’s Rhind lecturer in archaeology, which he published in 1887. In 1889 he published his first book on monuments, the small Monumental History of the Early British Church. The same year he was appointed co-editor of Archaeologia Cambrensis, rising to editor by 1892. Allen quit his job as an engineer–his family’s wealth was enough for support–to devote all his energies to archaeology. Several additional Rhind lectures followed. He was appointed editor of the Reliquary and Illustrated Archaeologist in 1893, succeeding J. Charles Cox (1843-1919). In England he became a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in 1896, collaborating on a book with Arthur G. Langdon on Cornish cross sculpture the same year. He was Yates lecturer in archaeology in University College, London, for 1898. The Society of Antiquaries of Scotland funded his excavations in Scotland. In 1899 he published the article “Early Christian Art in Wales” in the journal, the first systematic account of nascent Christian Welsh material culture. Allen and another Rhind lecturer, Joseph Anderson (1832-1916), published The Early Christian Monuments of Scotland, in 1903, an analysis and classification of ornament of early medieval sculpture which became a model for medieval art methodology in England. He followed this with Celtic Art in Pagan and Christian Times in 1904. He died at his home in London in 1907. His notes are held in the British Library. Allen’s knowledge of various media, metalwork and manuscript illumination, enabled him to make a comparative study of art in disparate media, allowing him to establish the first serious chronology of early indigenous art in Britain. His iconographical typology formed the basis of later art indexes and modern visual collections. As an engineer, Allen employed scientific methods of description as the basis of an esthetic appreciation of his objects. He was an early exponent of historic preservation, advocating casting, photographing, drawing and other forms of documenting monuments which were weathering away. His writing was often critical of museum curators, who, he thought, ignored early Christianity in Britain and were aloof from the public.

Selected Bibliography

Celtic Art in Pagan and Christian Times. London: Methuen & Co.,1904; Early Christian Symbolism in Great Britain and Ireland before the Thirteenth Century: the Rhind Lectures in Archaeology for 1885. London: Whiting & Co., 1887; The Monumental History of the Early British Church. London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1889; and Langdon, Arthur G. Old Cornish Crosses. Truro: J. Pollard, 1896; and Anderson, Joseph. The Early Christian Monuments of Scotland: a Classified, Illustrated, Descriptive List of the Monuments, with an Analysis of their Symbolism and Ornamentation. 2 vols. Edinburgh: Society of antiquaries of Scotland/Neill & Co., 1903.

Sources

Henderson, Isabel. “The Making of The Early Christian Monuments of Scotland.” in Allen, John Romilly and Anderson, Joseph, The Early Christian Monuments of Scotland. vol.1 Balgavies, Forfar: Pinkfoot, 1993, pp. 13-40; [obituary:] The Times (London) July 13, 1907.

Alloway, Lawrence

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Alloway, Lawrence

Other Names:

Lawrence Alloway

Gender: male

Date Born: 17 September 1926

Date Died: 02 January 1990

Place Born: Wimbledon, London, England, UK

Place Died: New York, NY, USA

Home Country/ies: United Kingdom

Subject Area(s): American (North American), Modern (style or period), and Pop (fine arts styles)

Career(s): curators

Overview

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. He lectured on art to laborers who belonged to the Workers Education Association, beginning a life-long association with art education and a commitment of art for the masses. While working as a docent (visiting lecturer) at the Tate Gallery and the National Gallery, Alloway joined an informal association of artists known as the the Independent Group in 1952. Comprising artists, architects, art historians and critics who endorsed liberal and pluralistic attitudes toward art, the group frequently met at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, then on Dover Street, off Piccadilly, London. He wrote as British correspondent for the Art News beginning in 1953 (to 1957), edited by Thomas Hess, who was using it as a vehicle supporting Abstract Expressionism. Alloway married an artist, Sylvia Sleigh (b. 1916) in 1954 and mounted “Collages and Objects” a landmark exhibition (designed by John McHale). He was appointed assistant director of the Institute of Contemporary Art the following year (held until 1957). His well-organized shows and informed critiques of avant-garde artists brought him high profile, lecturing on film and art. His frequently arrogant manner and quixotic pronouncements on art became a hallmark of the nascent modern-art style. He and McHale convened a series of meetings at the IG (ultimately the last) on the mass media as part of the “Aesthetic Problems of Contemporary Art”. During his years as director of the ICA, Alloway shortened the phrase ”popular art” to “Pop Art” in his writing, creating the dominant term for the new art that dealt with consumer images. In 1958 he received a scholarship by the United States Government to study American art in the U.S. He met Barnett Newman. In 1961 he and his wife moved to the United States to teach at Bennington College; the following year the Guggenheim Museum appointed him curator. Alloway joined The Nation as art critic in 1963 (to 1971). In 1966 the Smithsonian Institution invited the Guggenheim to make selections for the United States submissions to the Venice Biennale. Alloway clashed with the new director of the Guggenheim, Thomas M. Messer, over the choices and Smithsonian withdrew the invitation. Alloway was removed from the museum, taking on editorial roles with The Nation (1968-1980) and Artforum (1971-1976). In 1968 (to 1981) he was appointed professor of art history at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, Long Island. There he co-founded the magazine Art Criticism with the critic Donald Kuspit. His collected essays appeared in 1975 as Topics in American Art Since 1945. Alloway wrote the Museum of Modern Art catalog for the Robert Rauschenberg retrospective in 1977. He developed a neurological disorder in 1981, leaving teaching and thereafter requiring the use a wheelchair. A second set of collected essays, Network: Art in the Complex Present, appeared in 1984. Although a pro-socialist and pro-feminist-issue writer, he argued publicly with Griselda Pollock in a review of her book which set off a debate in the Women’s Studies Journal. At a time when sexual harrassment was tolerated, Alloway was known as a unsafe person for women to be alone with in his office. He was engaged in a catalog for a forthcoming show of work by his wife when he died suddenly of cardiac arrest at his Manhattan home at age 63.

Alloway was one of the earliest European champions of American postwar art (Glueck). A provocative writer, his varied tastes were at odds with a strict theory of modern esthetics and those who espoused specific ideologies of art. His work with the Independent Group helped form a radically inclusive understanding of culture, incorporating science fiction, Hollywood films, and game theory (The Independent Group, 1989). He maintained an anti-academic stance toward art his whole career. A 1990 ICA retrospective exhibition about The Independent Group underscored that critical writings of the group, Alloway’s, Richard Hamilton, Reyner Banham and the Smithsons, “were far more radical and fertile than the artworks they created” (Hall). His coining of the term “pop art” was meant to refer to the mass media; when later a style of painting emerged with the same title, Alloway considered this a second phase of the art form (The Independent Group, 1989).

Selected Bibliography

European Art Today: 35 Painters and Sculptors. Minneapolis: Minneapolis Society of Fine Arts, 1959; The Venice Biennale, 1895-1968; from Salon to Goldfish Bowl. Greenwich, CT: New York Graphic Society, 1968; American Pop Art. New York: Macmillan, 1974; Adolph Gottlieb, a Retrospective. New York: Arts Publisher, Inc./Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation, Inc., 1981; Network: Art and the Complex Present. Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1984; Modern Dreams: the Rise and Fall and Rise of Pop. Cambridge MA: MIT Press/The Institute for Contemporary Art, 1988.

Sources

“Lawrence Alloway.” in, Robbins, David, ed. The Independent Group: Postwar Britain and the Aesthetics of Plenty. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989, pp. 163-164; Sun-Young Lee, and Barrett, Terry. “The Critical Writings of Lawrence Alloway.” Studies in Art Education 32, no. 3 (Spring, 1991):171-177; Hall, James. “Who Am I to Criticise? Art critics are often criticised most recently by Lord Palumbo but are they as bad as they’re painted? Guardian (London) December 6, 1993, p. 5; Massey, Anne. The Independent Group: Modernism and Mass Culture in Britain 1945-1959. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1995, pp. 56, 70, 109-122; personal information; [obituaries:] Whitham, Graham. “Lawrence Alloway.” Independent (London), January 10, 1990, p. 28; Glueck, Grace. “Lawrence Alloway Is Dead at 63, Art Historian, Curator and Critic.” New York Times January 3, 1990, p. D19.

Almagro Basch, Martín

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

**Image Credit:** El Anaquel de Spantamicus

Full Name: Almagro Basch, Martín

Gender: male

Date Born: 17 April 1911

Date Died: 28 August 1984

Place Born: Tramacastilla, eruel, Aragon, Spain

Place Died: Madrid, Spain

Home Country/ies: Spain

Institution(s): Museo Arqueológico Nacional Madrid

Overview

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. During his time at the university, he participated in the Crucero del Mediterraneo (Cruise of the Mediterranean) and worked as a secretary in the Seminario de Historia Primitiva del Hombre (Primitive History of Mankind Seminar) (1932-1935) under his mentor Hugo Obermaier (1877-1946). At the university, he was a student representative for FUE, an anarcho-communist organization. His thesis was entitled La alteraciones de las comunidades de Teruel y Albarracín durante el siglo XVI (Altercations of the Communities of Teruel and Albarracín during the 16th Century). After completing his studies, he began working for the Cuerpo de Archivos, Bibliotecas y Museos (Association of Archives, Libraries, and Museums) at the Biblioteca de la Facultad in 1935 and then at the Museo de Mahón. Until the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War he continued conducting research with Obermaier in archeology, prehistoric studies, and ethnology where he worked to protect caves with prehistoric drawings in Albarracín.

Almagro Basch joined with Manuel Hedilla (1902-1970) to form the Falange, the political party associated with the Francoist regime. However, due to his opposition to the 1937 Decreto de Unificación de la Falange (a decree by Franco merging his various supporting units into a single, ruling party), he was arrested. Still unsatisfied with the political situation in Salamanca, he enlisted and fought on the fronts of Aragon, Madrid, Extremadura, San Sebastian, Bilbao, and Barcelona. Due to illness, he was evacuated to the Cuartel General de Salamanca where he worked with Spanish Falangist poet Dionisio Ridruejo (1912-1975) in the propaganda department where he directed the journal Hierro in Bilbao. Despite his fascist predilection, following the war, he kept close ties with individuals associated with the monarchy; however, he never intervened directly in politics again. Instead, he turned to revive the field of Spanish archeology which had been neglected during the war. He replaced Pere Bosch Gimpera (1891-1974) (who was exiled during the war) as the chair of Prehistoria e Historia Antigua Universal y de España at the University of Barcelona in 1940. That same year, he was named a correspondent of the Hispanic Society of America.

Through his position with the Patrimonio Artistico de Levante (which he held from 1947-1966), he restored monuments that were damaged during the war and recovered goods that the Republic had looted from Spain. During this period from 1936-1956, Almagro Basch was the director of the Museo Arqueologico de Barcelona. He developed a specialized library service, and founded Ampurias the first Catalonian magazine focusing on prehistory and archeology. It has since become one for the most important publications in the field in Europe (Almagro Gorbea). In 1943, he both created and directed the Seccion de Barcelona in the Instituto Diego Velázquez. He was named a member of the Real Academia de la Historia in 1944. As a product of his expeditions in Empúries, he created an arqueological park open to visitors and published a series of scientific monographs through the 1950s.

Almagro Basch also notably led the first Spanish excavations abroad during his role as director of Arqueología de La Escuela Española de Historia y Arqueología (in the Caverna dei Pipistrelli, Liguria, Rome, and the Sahara). In 1954, he was named the chair of the department of Prehistoria at the Universidad de Madrid. Two years later he began working in the Prehistory division of the Museo Arqueológico Nacional and was eventually named director in 1969. He developed and led the Instituto Español de Prehistoria within the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC). Almagra Basch organized a specialized library and directed publications including Bibliotheca Praehistorica Hispana (1958) and Trabajos de Prehistoria, the most important Spanish prehistory reference. In 1980, he was named president of the Junta de Calificacion, Valoración y Exportación de Obras de Arte (Board of Qualification, valuation, and export of artworks) and once he retired he was named president of the Board of Trustees of the Museo Arqueológico Nacional. He received the title honorary professor at the Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales de Madrid.

Almagro Basch’s publications, excavations, and methods of scientific investigation not only earned him international recognition, but they made Spain’s national archeological institutions a model among European institutions. His scientific monographs essentially revived the field of archaeology in Spain and became internationally referenced sources of western mediterranean archeology. They highlight the different developments and controversies in the field of archaeology. He developed a systematic approach to categorize and analyze Spanish post-palaeolithic rock art that had previously been erroneously dated. His Corpus de Arte Rupestre Levantino provided images and contextualized more than three-quarters of the paintings in Spain. His research was so highly valued that it led to the incorporation of the study of archeology as a mandatory course for history degrees in all Spanish universities. Beyond his publications, his renovations and reorganization of the Museo Arqeuologico Nacional made it a spotlight of European archeology. Almagro Basch is credited for much of the respect for which the field of Spanish archaeology has acquired today. Because he received unprecedented funding for his excavations, it facilitated the continuation of archeological studies after his death.

Selected Bibliography

Ampurias: Historia de la ciudad y guía de las excavaciones. Barcelona: 1957;
Ars Hispaniae: historia universal del arte hispánico. 1, 1,. Madrid: Editorial Plus-Ultra, 1947;
Introducción a la arqueología: las culturas prehistóricas europeas. Barcelona: Ed. Apolo, 1941;
Introducción al estudio de la prehistoria y de la arqueología de campo. Madrid: Guadarrama, 1980;
Las Necrópolis de Ampurias, Introducción y necrópolis griegas Introducción y necrópolis griegas, 1953;
Prehistoria. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1960;

Sources

Almagro Gorbea, Martín “Martín Almagro Basch | Real Academia de La Historia.” http://dbe.rah.es/biografias/6472/martin-almagro-basch;
Alonso, Francisco Gracia. “Arqueología de la memoria: batallones disciplinarios de soldados-trabajadores y tropas del ejército en las excavaciones de Ampurias (1940 – 1943).” In Una inmensa prisión : los campos de concentración y las prisiones durante la Guerra Civil y el franquismo, 2003, ISBN 84-8432-438-9, págs. 37-60, 37–60. Crítica, 2003;
Alzuria, Gonzalo Pasamar, and Ignacio Peiró Martín. Diccionario Akal de Historiadores españoles contemporáneos. Ediciones AKAL, 2002;
Homenaje al prof. Martín Almagro Basch. Ministerio de Cultura, 1983;
Cruz Berrocal, María, José Manuel Gil-Carles Esteban, Manuel Gil Esteban, and Ma Isabel Martínez Navarrete. “Martín Almagro Basch, Fernando Gil Carles and the Corpus of Levantine Rock Art.” Trabajos de Prehistoria 62, no. 1 (June 30, 2005): 27–45;
Publicaciones Del Seminario de Arqueología y Numismática Aragonesas. Vol. 53–54. Caesaraugusta, 1981;
Ripoll Perello, Eduardo. “Martín Almagro Basch.” Trabajos de Prehistoria; Madrid 41 (January 1, 1984): 11–16;
Simón Díaz, José. “Don Martín Almagro Basch,” 1985;

Contributors: Denise Shkurovich

Alpatov, Mikhail Vladimirovich

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Alpatov, Mikhail Vladimirovich

Gender: male

Date Born: c. 1902-1903

Date Died: 1986

Place Born: Moscow, Russia

Place Died: Moscow, Russia

Home Country/ies: Russia

Subject Area(s): eighteenth century (dates CE), Medieval (European), nineteenth century (dates CE), Renaissance, and Russian (culture or style)

Overview

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.

Selected Bibliography

Le problème de la renaissance dans l’ancienne peinture russe. Firenze: Sansoni, 1967; Istoriografiia vseobshchei istorii; sbornik statei. Moscow: Nauka, 1966 ; Russian impact on art. New York: Philosophical Library, 1950.

Sources

The Dictionary of Art 1: 684-5; [Danilova, I. Y. ed.] Vospominaniia : tvorcheskaia sud’ba, semeinaia khronika, gody ucheniia, goroda i strany, liudi iskusstva . Moscow: “Iskusstvo”, 1994.

Alpers, Svetlana

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Alpers, Svetlana

Other Names:

Svetlana Alpers

Gender: female

Date Born: 10 February 1936

Place Born: Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, England, UK

Home Country/ies: United States

Subject Area(s): art history, art theory, Baroque, deconstruction (theory), Dutch (culture or style), Dutch Golden Age, Marxism, Netherlandish Renaissance-Baroque styles, and semiotics

Overview

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. Alpers accepted a teaching position as an associate professor at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1962 while working on her dissertation. She graduated from Harvard in 1965, writing her thesis under Seymour Slive on the Peter Paul Rubens cycle Torre de la Parada. Her work in Rubens’ archives brought her to the attention of Roger-Adolf d’Hulst, who suggested she turn her dissertation into a volume for the catalogue raissoné on Rubens. She rose to the rank of Professor at Berkeley. In 1971 she was appointed to the Board of Directors of the College Art Associate (remained until 1976). That same year here volume for the Rubens catalogue raissoné, The Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, number nine, was published. In 1977 an important methodological article by Alpers appeared in Daedalus examining progressive scholarship in art history in contrast with earlier scholarship. During the academic year 1979-80 she was a member at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. In 1983, Alpers co-founded the progressive interdisciplinary journal Representations, publishing the article, “Interpretation without Representation, or, The Viewing of Las Meninas,” in the first issue. That year, too, she published the first of her groundbreaking works in art history, The Art of Describing: Dutch Art in the Seventeenth Century. The book’s central thesis focused on the the immediacy and simplicity of Dutch painting and the Dutch preoccupation with the description of interiors and domestic scenes, contrasting it with narrative Italian painting. Iconographical approaches to baroque art, she wrote, such as those practiced by Erwin Panofsky and others, were insufficient to understand Dutch imagery. Her book likewise criticized mainstream Dutch scholarship and its reliance on emblems and emblemata books explain Netherlandish still life painting. The Art of Describing was well received, reviewers hailing Alper’s mastery of topics as diverse as optics and perspective theory. Critics, however, accused her of selective use of evidence, drawing only from paintings and texts which supported her theories. In 1988, during the era of shocking reattributions of many works of Rembrandt by the Rembrandt Research Project, Alpers published a monograph on the artist, Rembrandt’s Enterprise: The Studio and the Market The book examined Rembrandt’s market strategies and his modeling his art to appeal to a Dutch consumer base. Her use of economic theory and a concerted avoidance of visual criteria again upset traditionalists in the art world. Alpers co-wrote a book with fellow Berkeley art historian Michael Baxandall in 1994, Tiepolo and the Pictorial Intelligence. She was named Professor Emerita from Berkeley in 1994. The following year she returned to the art of the low countries with her Making of Rubens. The book looked at Rubens’ politics, his later critical reception in France, and theorized specific meaning in the recurring Silenus figures of his later work. Reaction to Alpers was summed up by Walter Liedtke. In an article on American historians of Dutch art, he characterized her work as containing “whole exclusions” of art that did not fit her thesis–such as the Utrecht school–a “typical exercise in American taste dressed up (with some French motifs) as a new analysis of Dutch Art.” However, her work Rembrandt’s Enterprise was included among the 169 major writings of art history in the 2010 Hauptwerke der Kunstgeschichte for her innovative approach to a central issue of Rembrandt research.

Selected Bibliography

[dissertation:] ‘Torre de la Parada’ Series and Narration in Rubens’ Mythological Works. Harvard University, 1965; “Ekphrasis and Aesthetic Attitudes in Vasari’s Lives.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtald Institutes 23 (1960): 190-215; The Decoration of the Torre de la Parada. Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, Part IX. New York: Phaidon, 1971; “Is Art History?” Daedalus106, no. 3 (Summer 1977):1-13; The Art of Describing: Dutch Art in the Seventeenth Century. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983; Rembrandt’s Enterprise: the Studio and the Market. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988; and Baxandall, Michael. Tiepolo and the Pictorial Intelligence. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994; The Making of Rubens. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995.

Sources

Presidential Lectures: Svetlana Alpers: CV SVETLANA ALPERS. http://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/alpers/cv; Ross, Alex. “Svetlana Alpers.” Stanford Presidential Lectures in the Humanities. http://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/alpers/; Liedtke, Walter. “The Study of Dutch Art in America.” Artibus et Historiae 21, no. 41 (2000): 214; Eberlein, Johann Konrad. “Svetlana Alpers: Rembrandt’s Enterprise.” Naredi-Rainer, Paul von. Hauptwerke der Kunstgeschichtsschreibung. Stuttgart: Alfred Kröner, 2010, pp. 7-10.

Alscher, Ludger

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Alscher, Ludger

Gender: male

Date Born: 1916

Date Died: 1985

Place Born: Munster, Lower Saxony, Germany

Place Died: Berlin, Germany

Home Country/ies: Germany

Subject Area(s): Ancient Greek (culture or style), Antique, the, and Classical

Overview

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.

Selected Bibliography

Götter vor Gericht: das Fälschungsproblem des Bostoner “Throns” die klassisch-griechische Kunst und die Archäologen. Berlin: Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften, 1963; Griechische Plastik. 4 vols. Berlin: Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften, 1954-1963.

Sources

Archäologenbildnisse: Porträts und Kurzbiographien von Klassichen Archäologen deutscher Sprache. Reinhard Lullies, ed. Mainz am Rhein: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 1988: 319-320.

Ainalov, Dmitrii Vlas’evich

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Ainalov, Dmitrii Vlas'evich

Other Names:

Dmitrii Vlas'evich Ainalov

Gender: male

Date Born: 1862

Date Died: 1939

Home Country/ies: Russia

Subject Area(s): Byzantine (culture or style), iconography, and Medieval (European)

Overview

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.

Selected Bibliography

Ellinisticheskie osnovy vizantiiskogo iskusstva. St. Petersberg, 1900, [published in 1900-1901 in the Bulletin of the Imperial Russian Archaeological Society], English: Hellenistic Origins of Byzantine Art. Cyril Mango, ed. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1961.

Sources

Kleinbauer, W. Eugene. Research Guide to the History of Western Art. Sources of Information in the Humanities, no. 2. Chicago: American Library Association, 1982, p. 61 mentioned; Kleinbauer, W. Eugene. Modern Perspectives in Western Art History: An Anthology of 20th-Century Writings on the Visual Arts. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971, p. 23 mentioned, 22 n. 42; Mango, Cyril. “Preface.” Hellenistic Origins of Byzantine Art. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1961; Bazin, Germain. Histoire de l’histoire de l’art: de Vasari à nos jours. Paris: Albin Michel, 1986, p. 168; Gutmann, Joseph. “Early Christian and Jewish Art.” in Attridge, Harold W., and Hata, Gohei, eds. Eusebíus, Christianity, and Judaism. Cleveland: Wayne State University Press, pp. 270-271.

Byzantine iconographic scholar, pupil of N. P. Kondakov. Ainalov weighed in with the important Byzantinists Josef Rudolf Thomas Strzygowski and Charles Rufus Morey in contendin

Adhémar, Jean

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Adhémar, Jean

Other Names:

Jean Adhémar

Gender: male

Date Born: 1908

Date Died: 20 June 1987

Place Born: Paris, Île-de-France, France

Place Died: Paris, Île-de-France, France

Home Country/ies: France

Subject Area(s): museums (institutions) and prints (visual works)

Career(s): directors (administrators) and museum directors

Overview

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. The younger Adhémar studied art history initially under Marcel Aubert at école des Chartes, where he gained a life-long appreciation of documents, and then under Henri Focillon at the Sorbonne. His dissertation, completed in 1929, was on antique influences in medieval art in France. He married his wife, Hélène, during this time. Julien Cain (1887-1974), director of the Bibliothèque nationale invited him to join the the library in 1932 in the prints and photography division (Cabinet des Estampes et de Photographie). His 1935 exhibition for the library of the prints of Goya was particularly notable. During this time he acted as the library’s correspondent and principal French contact for Fritz Saxl at the Warburg Institute. Adhémar adopted Saxl’s methodology in part; rewriting his doctoral thesis and publishing it in 1939 (through the Warburg Institute) as Influences antiques dans l’art du moyen âge français. He assisted in the move of the Cabinet to the former Salomon de Rothschild residence at the Rue Berryer in the late 1930s. He was appointed director of the Cabinet in 1961. His tenure saw the expansion of the prints collection and particularly photographs and innovatively, posters. During that time he edited Diderot’s Salon reviews into book form with Jean Seznec. He was appointed editor of the Gazette des Beaux-Arts in 1956 by it owner, the art dealer and historian Georges Wildenstein. He broadened the scope of the Gazette to include articles on the history of collecting and 19th-century caricature. The magazine, under his leadership, became a vehicle for publishing documents (e.g., the diary of Prince Eugen of Sweden and extracts of the journal of Champfleury). Adhémar founded the serial Nouvelles de l’estampe in 1965. He supervised the dissertation work of Philippe Roberts-Jones. He retired from the Bibliothèque nationale 1977 and the editorship of the Gazette in 1987, the year of his death. Following his death the Gazette featured an entire issue devoted to his life and scholarship. Influences antiques dans l’art du moyen âge français was Adhémar’s masterpiece. In it he achieved nothing less than a history of the medieval reception of and mentality toward the ancient world (Rainer and Rainer). In this, as most of his writing, he stressed the relationship of literature to the art–as opposed to simply linking visual similarities of the two ages. Using a vast and disparate variety of antique written sources Influences antiques dans l’art du moyen âge français links the known classical monuments of the middle ages with French medieval art. He demonstrated profoundly what was generally known, that the first renaissance of the classical world in Europe came with the Romanesque (Krautheimer). His knowledge and love of literature led him to issue studies on Diderot, Flaubert, Baudelaire and Zola. His curatorial interest was on the French Renaissance, particularly patronage.

Selected Bibliography

Influences antiques dans l’art du moyen âge français: recherches sur les sources et les thèmes d’inspiration. Studies of the Warburg Institute 7. London: Warburg Institute, 1939; Lithographies de paysages en France à l’époque romantique. Archives de l’art français, nouv. période 19. Paris: A. Colin, 1939; edited, with Seznec, Jean. Diderot, Denis. Salons. 4 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957-1966; La Gravure originale au XVIIIe siècle. Paris: A. Somogy, 1963, English, Graphic Art of the 18th Century. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964; Toulouse-Lautrec: lithographies, pointes sèches, oeuvre complet. Paris: Arts et métiers graphiques, 1965, English, Toulouse-Lautrec: His Complete Lithographs and Drypoints. New York: H. N. Abrams, 1965; Gravure originale au XXe siècle. Paris: A. Somogy, 1967. English, Twentieth-century Graphics. New York: Praeger,1971; Imagerie populaire française. Milan: Electa, 1968; Chronologie impressionniste: 1863-1905. Paris: Editions de la Réunion des Musées Nationaux, 1981; “In Praise of Lithography.” In, Lithography: 200 Years of Art, History & Technique. New York: H. N. Abrams, 1983.

Sources

Krautheimer, Richard. “[Review of] Influences antiques dans l’art du moyen âge français.” Art Bulletin 22, no. 4 (December 1940): 280-281; “Jean Adhémar.” Apollo 101 (January 1975): 70; Adhémar, Jean. “A Personal Postscript.” The Artist and the Writer in France: Essays in Honour of Jean Seznec. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974; Bazin, Germain. Histoire de l’histoire de l’art; de Vasari à nos jours. Paris: Albin Michel, 1986, p. 151; The Dictionary of Art 1: 154; Rainer, Michael, and Rainer, Thomas. “Jean Adhémar: Influences antiques dans l’art du moyen âge français.” Naredi-Rainer, Paul von. Hauptwerke der Kunstgeschichtsschreibung. Stuttgart: Alfred Kröner, 2010, pp. 4-7; [obituaries:] Sutton, Denys. “Jean Adhémar.” Burlington Magazine 129, no. 1015 (October 1987): 669; “Hommage à Jean Adhémar.” [entire issue] Gazette des Beaux-Arts, (January/February) 1988; Hofmann, Werner. “Jean Adhémar (1908-1987).” Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 52 no. 2 (1989): 296-297.

Contributors: Lee Sorensen

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 descen

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