Specialist in the sculpture and art of ancient Greece. Professor at the University of Würzburg 1909-1935. His masterwork, Der schöne Mensch im Altertum, appeared in 3 successive editions, and broke with (til then) traditional art history by examining how certain artistic themes were handled and changed over time.
Selected Bibliography
Der schöne Mensch im Altertum, 1898.
Sources
Archäologenbildnisse: Porträts und Kurzbiographien von Klassichen Archäologen deutscher Sprache. Reinhard Lullies, ed. Mainz am Rhein: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 1988: 168-169.
Citation
"Bulle, Heinrich." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/bulleh/.
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Specialist in the sculpture and art of ancient Greece. Professor at the University of Würzburg 1909-1935. His masterwork, Der schöne Mensch im Altertum, appeared in 3 successive editions, and broke with (til then) traditional art history by examin
Professor of Fine Arts, Institute of Fine Arts, NYU. Buchthal was born to Eugen Buchthal (1878-1954) and Thea Wolff (Buchthal) (1886-1968), wealthy shop owners. The family lived in the “Villa Buchthal” on Berlin’s west end (after the war, the home of tenor Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, b. 1925). Buchthal attended the Herder-Reform-Gymnasium in Charlottenberg, graduating in 1927. After a semester studying economics, he switched to art history, attending classes at the universities including the Sorbonne, Paris, Heidelberg and Berlin before settling on the so-called new “Hamburg school” art historians Fritz Saxl, Edgar Wind and Erwin Panofsky and the concomitant Warburg Institute, then directed by Saxl. The accession of power in Germany by the Nazis in 1933 meant that all Jewish university faculty were being summarily discharged. Saxl warned Buchthal that if he could not finish his dissertation by the end of 1933, he would be forced to leave the Warburg without a degree, as the Institute was closing its doors. Panofsky was already living in New York as a visiting professor, but returned briefly to Hamburg that summer for his students oral examinations and dissertations. Buchthal finished his dissertation in the two summer weeks for Panofsky to grant the degree, writing on the Codex Pariinus Graecus 139. He emigrated in 1934 for “racial reasons” (he was Jewish) to London with the Warburg Institute staff and library. The Warburg in London became a center for German refugee scholars like Buchthal, including, among others E. H. Gombrich and Wind. In 1935 he studied Arabic at the School of Oriental and African Studies before receiving a fellowship from 1936 to 1937 at the University of Beirut. He was the 1938 Lord Plumer Fellow at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. That same year he also re-edited and published his dissertation, The Illustrations of the Paris Psalter: a Study in Middle Byzantine Painting (1938). In 1939 her married Amalia “Maltschi” Serkin (1904-1996), sister of the pianist Rudolf Serkin (1903-1991). The Warburg Institute was evacuated to Denham, England, at the outbreak of World War II. Buchthal acted as librarian for the Institute during 1941-43, becoming a Lecturer a the University of London 1944-45 (which subsumed the Institute). He was a visiting fellow at Dumbarton Oaks 1950-51 and again in 1965. In 1957 he published perhaps his most influential book, Miniature Painting in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem. Buchthal was the first to organize the illuminated manuscripts produced in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, from the twelfth-century Melisende Psalter to the later manuscripts written in Acre, into a cohesive body for discussion. His book remains a detailed introduction to the manuscripts and a comprehensive study of Crusader miniature painting. In 1959-60 Buchtal was appointed a temporary member at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, N. J. The years 1960-65 Buchthal was an endowed chair at the Warburg Institute with the year 1963 as a visiting professor at Columbia University, New York. Between 1965-75 he was the first Ailsa Mellon Bruce Chair in Fine Arts at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. He was a Guggenheim Fellow in 1970 and 1971. The1970s were a period of great publishing activity for Buchthal. His books include works on both French and Italian manuscripts of the legend of the fall of Troy, Historia Troiana (1971), and later Byzantine painting, Patronage in Thirteenth-century Constantinople, with Hans Belting, (1978). From 1975 onward he was a professor emeritus at New York University. Buchthal’s students at the Warburg included Michael Kauffmann (q.v.), who would later become its director. His Institute of Fine Arts students included Harvey Stahl. Buchthal died of a heart ailment at age 87; his wife, Amalia, died less than a week later. Buchthal’s area was Byzantine and western medieval art. His 1957 Miniature Painting in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem (1957) was praised for weaving paleographic and liturgical analysis with meticulous visual skill. Buchthal was particularly interested in the transfers of traditions and culture between the medieval east and west. He is credited for opening the area of Crusader culture as an area for art historical study. Thomas F. S. J. Mathews, a former student, described Buchthal’s writings as laying “the foundation for all subsequent work on the art of the Crusaders.”
Selected Bibliography
[bibliography to 1980:] “The Writings of Hugo Buchthal, 1933-1980.” Art of the Mediterranean World, A.D. 100 to 1400. Washington, DC: Decatur House Press, 1983, pp. xvii-xxii; A Hand List of Illuminated Oriental Christian Manuscripts. London: The Warburg Institute, 1942; Historia Troiana: Studies in the History of Mediaeval Secular Illustration. London: Warburg Institute, University of London, 1971; Miniature Painting in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957; The Miniatures of the Paris Psalter: a Study in Middle Byzantine Painting. London: The Warburg Institute, 1938; The “Musterbuch” of Wolfenbüttel and its Position in the Art of the Thirteenth Century. Vienna: Verl. d. österr. Akad. d. Wiss., 1979; Patronage in Thirteenth-century Constantinople: an Atelier of Late Byzantine Book Illumination and Calligraphy. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Center for Byzantine Studies/Harvard University, 1978; The Western Aspects of Gandhara Sculpture. Annual Lecture on Aspects of Art, Henriette Hertz Trust of the British Academy. Proceedings of the British Academy, 1945. London: British Academy, 1947. 0.Metzler
Sources
Buchthal, Hugo. Persönliche Erinnerungen eines Achtzigjährigen an sein Studium bei Panofsky in Hamburg. Wiener Jahrbuch 44 (1991): 205-13; Buchthal, Hugo. “Persönliche Erinnerungen an die ersten Jahre des Warburg Institutes in London.” Wiener Jahrbuch 45 (1992): 213-21;Wendland, Ulrike. Biographisches Handbuch deutschsprachiger Kunsthistoriker im Exil: Leben und Werk der unter dem Nationalsozialismus verfolgten und vertriebenen Wissenschaftler. Munich: Saur, 1999, vol. 1, pp. 73-6; [transcript] Hugo Buchthal. Interviews with Art Historians, 1991-2002. Getty Research Institute, Malibu, CA. [obituaries:] Burlington Magazine (1997): 198-99; Kauffmann, C. Michael, and Gombrich, Ernst. The Guardian. November 19, 1996, p. 18; Pace, Eric. “Hugo Buchthal Is Dead at 87, Studied Medieval Illumination.” The New York Times November 13, 1996, p. D21; The Independent (London), November 19, 1996, p. 18; The Times (London) November 22, 1996.
Citation
"Buchthal, Hugo." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/buchthalh/.
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Professor of Fine Arts, Institute of Fine Arts, NYU. Buchthal was born to Eugen Buchthal (1878-1954) and Thea Wolff (Buchthal) (1886-1968), wealthy shop owners. The family lived in the “Villa Buchthal” on Berlin’s west end (after the war, the home
First Director Wallraf-Rich. Museum. Buchner studied under Heinrich Wölfflin. As the director of the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen (Bavarian State Painting Collections), he assisted the Gestapo in the confiscation of Jewish collections. He played a crucial role in the removal of the Gent altarpiece to Germany. After Germany’s surrender, he was ismissed from his position in 1945. Buchner was reinstalled in 1953.
Sources
Wölfflin, Heinrich. Heinrich Wölfflin, 1864-1945: Autobiographie, Tagebücher und Briefe. Joseph Ganter, ed. Basel: Schwabe & Co., 1982, p. 490; “Raub und Resitution” Jüdisches Museum Berlin (exhibition webpage) http://www.jmberlin.de/raub-und-restitution/en/home.php
Citation
"Buchner, Ernst." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/buchnere/.
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First Director Wallraf-Rich. Museum. Buchner studied under Heinrich Wölfflin. As the director of the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen (Bavarian State Painting Collections), he assisted the Gestapo in the confiscation of
Subject Area(s): Medieval (European) and Modern (style or period)
Overview
Medievalist and modernist, Albers scholar. Bucher was born to Aloïs Bucher and Gabrielle Zundel (Bucher). He attended the Zürich Gymnasium Zürich, receiving a B.A., in 1947. After additional graduate study at the universities of Zürich and Rome, Bucher began teaching as a lecturer at the University of Bern, Switzerland in 1952, continuing to work on his Ph.D. He emigrated to the United States where he taught, also as an instructor, at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis between 1953 and 1954. In 1954 he married Elizabeth R. Ditter and was appointed assistant professor at Yale University; he received his Ph.D. at the University of Bern, Switzerland, in 1955. A revised version of his dissertation was published as Notre-Dame de Bonmont und die ersten Zisterzienserabteien der Schweiz(Notre Dame de Bonmont and the Earliest Cistercian Monasteries of Switzerland) in 1957. Bucher was secretary of the International Center for Medieval Art from 1960-64, editing its art journal, Gesta. He briefly taught as an associate professor at Brown University from 1960 to 1963, receiving an M.A. there and publishing his Josef Albers: Despite Straight Lines, both in 1961, before an appointment as full professor at Princeton University in 1963. In 1970 he was professor at the State University of New York at Binghamton. He edited a facsimile edition of the Pamplona Bibles in 1971. A revised edition of his Albers book appeared in 1977. Beginning in 1978 Bucher was professor at Florida State University, Tallahassee. In 1979, he embarked on a facsimile project of architectural pattern and sketchbooks of the middle ages, including that of Villard de Honnecourt, published as Architector. In the 1980s Bucher began constructing the elongated cinder block building on a remote 400-acre tract of land. The thinktank, called Nautilus, was based on the ideas of R. Buckminster Fuller and contained living quarters, a lecture hall, library and art gallery. He directed the Society of Architectural Historians. An apocalyptic novel, originally written in English, was published in German as, Ein strahlendes Ende in 1984. He retired from Florida State University in 1996. A chain smoker, he suffered a series of strokes from which he died in 1999. After his death, Nautilus was bequeathed to the Collins Center for Public Policy to be the Collins Nautilus Institute for Advanced Study. He was a recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship and an Institute of Advanced Studies fellowship. A Florida obituary described him as, “an exotic combination of a classically trained Old World intellectual and a lifelong Bohemian.”
Selected Bibliography
[dissertation] Die Zisterzienserabtei Notre-Dame de Bonmont im Zusammenhang mit der burgundisch-transjuranischen Gruppe, University of Bern, 1955, published as Notre-Dame de Bonmont und die ersten Zisterzienserabteien der Schweiz. Bern: Benteli, 1957; Josef Albers: Despite Straight Lines. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1961; the Pamplona Bibles. 2 vols. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971; Architector: the Lodge Books and Sketchbooks of Medieval Architects. 4 vols. New York: Abaris, 1979ff.
Sources
Bucher-Sidler, Elisabeth. Francçois Bucher: 1983 bis 1996. Lucern: Edition Partikel, 1996; [obituaries:] Hinson, Mark. “Au Revoir, Francois Bucher.” Tallahassee Democrat December 5, 1999, p. D3; Hinson, Mark. “Bucher, Ex FSU Prof, Dies.” Tallahassee Democrat November 11, 1999, p. A3.
Medievalist and modernist, Albers scholar. Bucher was born to Aloïs Bucher and Gabrielle Zundel (Bucher). He attended the Zürich Gymnasium Zürich, receiving a B.A., in 1947. After additional graduate study at the universities of Zürich and Rome, B
Subject Area(s): Gender identity, Italian (culture or style), Modern (style or period), and women (female humans)Women
Career(s): curators
Overview
Curator and Director of the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna di Roma, (National Gallery of Modern Art, Rome) 1942-1975; first woman art museum director in Italy. Bucarelli studied art history at the University of Rome under Adolfo Venturi and Pietro Toesca. After graduation, she joined the department of Antiquities and Fine Arts, part of the Ministry of Education. She remained at the department as fascism overtook Italy. At the height of World War II, she assumed the directorship of the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, Rome, in 1942. Her efforts saved the collection from the air raids. As the Allies entered Italy and the Fascist Ministry moved to Padua, Bucarelli remained in Rome with her museum. She watched as colleagues, including Giulio Carlo Argan were dismissed by the government for failing to take a fascist oath of loyalty. By 1944, she reopned the museum, restoring works by non-Italian artists which had been removed during the Fascist Era for nationalist sentiment. After the War, she organized shows. Bucarelli solicited the advice of prominet art critics and scholars such as Corrado Maltese (1921-2001), Nello Ponente and Maurizio Calvesi (b. 1927) to advise on acquitisions. These included the Futurist movement, Italian mainstream modernists such as Modigliani, Moranti and Savinio, as well as Abstract Art from Italy and the West. She launched a major Picasso show at the Gallery in 1953. Her 1954 Alberto Burri exhibition brought a controversy in the Italian Parliament, when members considered him a foreigner to have a show in the national museum. Other exhibitions included Piet Mondrian in 1956, Jackson Pollock in 1958 (a year before the artist’s death), Casimir Malevich in 1959 and Mark Rothko in 1962. That same year she bought a Van Gogh for the gallery, “The Woman from Arles” only the second held in a public Italina collection. Her catalog on Jean Fautrier, published in 1960, remains an important work. During her tenure she secured Luigi Cosenza as architect for the new wing of the gallery. She married the journalist and writer Paolo Monelli (1894-1984) in 1963. Bucarelli retired from the Gallery in 1975, donating her personal collection of paintings to the Gallery in 1996. She died in 1998 at the age of eighty in a Rome hospital. A striking woman with a fashionable wardrobe, she left her famous clothing collection to the al Museo delle Arti Decorative Boncompagni Ludovisi (Museum Decorative Arts) in Rome. The Gallery mounted an exhibition of her donation and accomplishments in 2009.
Selected Bibliography
Esposizione d’arte contemporanea: Roma, 1944-1945. Rome: Galleria Nazionle d’Arte Moderna, 1944; The National Gallery of Modern Art, Rome-Valle Guilia. Rome: Istituto poligrafico dello Stato, Libreria dello Stato, 1954; Jean Fautrier; pittura e materia. Milan: Il Saggiatore 1960; Scultori italiani contemporanei. Milan: A. Martello, 1967; Giacometti. Rome: Editalia 1962; Gustave Courbet (1819-1877). Rome: De Luca, 1969.
Sources
Brey, Ilaria Dagnini. The Venus Fixers. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009, p. 22-23; Margozzi, Mariastella. Palma Bucarelli: il museo come avanguardia. Milan: Electa, 2009; [obituary:] “Palma Bucarelli.” Le Monde July 30 1998.
Citation
"Bucarelli, Palma." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/bucarellip/.
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Curator and Director of the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna di Roma, (National Gallery of Modern Art, Rome) 1942-1975; first woman art museum director in Italy. Bucarelli studied art history at the University of Rome under Ad
Wickhoff, Franz ed. Beschreibendes Verzeichnis der illuminierten Handschriften in Österreich. Leipzig: K. W. Hiersemann, 1905ff.; Wickhoff, Franz, ed. Einige Zeichnungen Rembrandts mit biblischen Vorwrfen: Seminarstudien. Innsbruck: Verlag der Wagner’schen Universitäts-Buchhandlung, 1906; Das Problem der Wiener Genesis. Jahrbuch der kunsthistorischen Sammlungen in Wien : Sonderhefte no. 92 (1936); and Gerstinger, Hans. Die byzantinischen Handschriften. 2 vols. Leipzig: Karl W. Hiersemann, 1937-1938; Die Kunstdenkmäler der Zisterzienserklosters Zwettl. Baden bei Wien: R.M. Rohrer, 1940.
Citation
"Buberl, Paul." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/buberlp/.
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Subject Area(s): eighteenth century (dates CE), French (culture or style), and painting (visual works)
Overview
Art historian of French eighteenth-century painting and Harvard University professor. Bryson was born to Edward James Bryson, a director of a large company and Mai Bendon (Bryson), Bryson, a physical therapist. Bryson attended King’s College, Cambridge receiving an A M. in 1971. He attended University of California, Berkeley between 1970-72 before completing his Ph.D., at Cambridge in 1977. Beginning in 1976, Bryson taught as a fellow in English at King’s College. Bryson burst onto the art historical scene with his 1981 book Word and Image: French Painting of the Ancien Regime. Using the techniques of a literary critic, with which Bryson was trained, he analyzed eighteenth century painting through a deconstructivist set of conflicting intentions within the painting. He moved to the University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, in 1988 as professor of comparative arts. Byrson did much to bring the art writing of the (basically French) literary critics to the audiences of art history. His 1988 book, Calligram, collected the work of Julia Kristeva, Jean Baudrillard, Louis Marin, Michel Foucault and Roland Barthes and Yves Bonnefoy. Bryson joined the Department of Fine Arts at Harvard University in 1990. He is the Editor of the “Cambridge New Art History” series (Cambridge University Press). As an art theorist, he employs a methodology examining what he identifies as conflicting factors (“impulses”) in the creation to the work of art, including social history and psychology. Art history, he argues, “attempts a mimesis of the absolute idealism of art, as the latter had been defined since early aesthetics.” (Soussloff)
Selected Bibliography
Looking at the Overlooked : Four Essays on Still Life Painting. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990;. Tradition and Desire: from David to Delacroix. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984;. Vision and Painting: the Logic of the Gaze. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1983; Word and Image: French Painting of the Ancien Régime. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981; Edited by Norman Bryson, Michael Ann Holly, Keith Moxey: Visual Culture: Images and Interpretations. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1994, and Visual Theory: Painting and Iinterpretation. Cambridge: Polity in association with Blackwell, 1989; edited, Calligram: Essays in New Art History from France. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988.
Sources
Soussloff, Catherine. “Historicism in Art History.” Encyclopedia of Aesthetics 2: 410.
Citation
"Bryson, Norman." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/brysonn/.
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Art historian of French eighteenth-century painting and Harvard University professor. Bryson was born to Edward James Bryson, a director of a large company and Mai Bendon (Bryson), Bryson, a physical therapist. Bryson attended King’s College, Camb
Place Died: Schaerbeek, Brussels-Capital Region, Belgium
Home Country/ies: Belgium
Subject Area(s): Medieval (European) and philosophy
Career(s): educators and philosophers
Overview
Medievalist; professor of philosophy. He was born in Ypres, Belgium or in Dutch Leper, Belgium. De Bruyne attended high school at the St.-Vincentiuscollege in Ypres. In 1915, when the Germans attacked Ypres in World War I, the family fled to Sées in France (Orne). Here De Bruyne continued his high school education. In September 1916 he joined the Belgian army. After the war De Bruyne enrolled at Louvain University to study philosophy while still serving in the army. After having earned his Bachelor’s degree, in 1919, he entered the Benedictine abbey, Regina Coeli, in Louvain. He soon obtained an extended leave from the army. He continued his studies, specializing in medieval philosophy. He graduated in 1921, and the next year he earned his doctor’s degree at Louvain University with his dissertation on Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), La théorie de la personalité d’après St.-Thomas. In December 1922 he was granted an indult to leave the Benedictine order. In 1925 De Bruyne obtained a teaching opposition at Ghent University. Between 1925 and 1937 he in addition held a teaching position at the Institut Saint-Louis in Brussels (now: Facultés Universitaires Saint-Louis, FUSL). In 1927 he married Lucy Swisser. In 1929 he published his first study on the philosophy of art, Kunstphilosophie. In 1930 he devoted a study to the contemporary painter Albert Servaes (1883-1966), Servaes. In the same year he was appointed professor extraordinarius and successively, in 1933, professor ordinarius at Ghent University. He held this position until his retirement in 1958. He taught ethics and philosophy, and from 1933 onwards, aesthetics as well. He published important studies in each of those fields. From 1935 to 1959 he taught at the Koloniale Hogeschool in Antwerp, later renamed Universitair Instituut voor Overzeese Gebieden (UNIVOG). In 1938 he was elected a member of the Koninklijke Vlaamse Academie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en Schone Kunsten van België. In the field of aesthetics two handbooks appeared in 1940 and 1942 respectively. In 1945, after the Second World War, he served for a short time as the Belgian Minister of Colonial Affairs. In the following year he published a major work on medieval aesthetics, in three volumes, Études d’esthétique médiévale, which was followed in 1947 by L’esthétique du Moyen Age. De Bruyne was a member of the editorial board of the sixth edition (1947) of the Winkler Prins Encyclopaedie, representing Belgium. In the 1950s his monumental five-volume work on the history of aesthetics, from Greek Antiquity up to the Renaissance, appeared, Geschiedenis van de Aesthetica. In 1954 he became a foreign member of the Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie voor wetenschappen. De Bruyne in addition to his scholarly career served many years as a politician. His pioneering work in the field of medieval aesthetics, Études d’esthétique médiévale, is an exhaustive scholarly investigation into medieval Latin sources dealing with beauty, art, literature, and music. As explicitly stated in the introduction, De Bruyne refrained from taking into consideration modern interpretations or aesthetic evaluations of medieval works of art.
Selected Bibliography
Saint Thomas d’Aquin. Le Milieu, l’Homme, L’Oeuvre. Paris: Beauchesne, 1928; Kunstphilosophie. Brussels: Standaard- Boekhandel, 1929, French: Esquisse d’une philosophie de l’art. Brussels: L’Édition Universelle, 1930; Servaes. Brussels: Standaard- Boekhandel, 1932; Albert Servaes en de Vlaamsche vroomheid. Antwerp: Die Poorte, 1935; Philosophie van de kunst: phaenomenologie van het kunstwerk. Antwerp: Standaard-Boekhandel, 1940; Het Aesthetisch Beleven. Antwerp: Standaard- Boekhandel, 1942; Études d’esthétique médiévale. 3 vols. Bruges: De Tempel, 1946; L’esthétique du Moyen Age. Louvain: Institut Supérieur de Philosophie, 1947; Geschiedenis van de Aesthetica. 1. De Griekse Oudheid, 2. De Romeinse Oudheid, 3. De Christelijke Oudheid, 4. De Middeleeuwen, 5. De Renaissance. Antwerp: Standaard-Boekhandel, 1951-1955.
Sources
De Seyn, Eug. Dictionnaire biographique des Sciences, des Lettres et des Arts en Belgique. 1. Brussels: Éditions L’Avenir, 1935, p. 214; De Cock, A. Nationaal Biografisch Woordenboek. 7, Brussels: Paleis der Academiën, 1977, 108-114; Grooten, J. “Bruyne, Edgar de” Winkler Prins Encyclopaedie 5. Amsterdam – Brussel: Elsevier, 1949, p. 172-173; Bazin, Germain. Histoire de l’histoire de l’art; de Vasari à nos jours. Paris: Albin Michel, 1986 p. 189-190, 354; [obituaries:] Janssens, A. J. “In memoriam Prof. Dr. Edgar De Bruyne, 1898-1959” Tijdschrift voor Philosophie 21 (1959): 356-364; De Raeymaeker, L. “In memoriam Edgar De Bruyne” Revue philosophique de Louvain 57 (1959): 286-289; Sassen, Ferd. “Herdenking van Edgar de Bruyne (18 april 1898 – 6 mei 1959)” Jaarboek der Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, 1959-1960. Amsterdam: Noord-Hollandse uitgevers Maatschappij, 1960, p. 359-365.
Medievalist; professor of philosophy. He was born in Ypres, Belgium or in Dutch Leper, Belgium. De Bruyne attended high school at the St.-Vincentiuscollege in Ypres. In 1915, when the Germans attacked Ypres in World War I, the family fled to Sées
Subject Area(s): catalogues raisonnés and Dutch (culture or style)
Overview
Professor of Art History at the University of Amsterdam (1961-1985); lead art historian for the Rembrandt Research Project (RRP) catalogue raisonné, part of the Stichting Foundation Rembrandt Research Project. Bruyn studied art history at Utrecht University. In 1948, before he finished his study, he was involved in cataloging old paintings in the Rijksmuseum Kröller-Müller. In 1950 he was appointed assistant at the Amsterdam Rijksmuseum, where he helped prepare the 1952 exhibition Drie eeuwen portret in Nederland (Three centuries of portraiture in the Netherlands). In 1954, he was employed at the Art History Institute of Utrecht University. His dissertation, De Levensbron, submitted in 1957 under J. G. van Gelder, was devoted to the “Fountain of Life”, a painting by a pupil of Jan van Eyck preserved in Madrid. In this study he addressed, among other things, the many questions surrounding the emulation of the Van Eyck style by his pupils. In 1961, Bruyn was appointed full professor at the University of Amsterdam. His inaugural lecture, “Over het voortleven der Middeleeuwen,” dealt with the legacy of the Middle Ages. By that time, he already had published a number of articles on Dutch painting (on David Bailly, Jan van Scorel, and Rembrandt). In 1968 he co-founded the Rembrandt Research Project (RRP), together with Bob Haak, J. G. van Gelder, J. A. Emmens, Simon H. Levie, and Pieter J. J. van Thiel. The project’s aim was a comprehensive study of all of Rembrandt’s paintings and resolving the uncertainties surrounding the authenticity of many paintings, to which several scholars had turned their attention. Independently of the project, Horst Gerson proposed a drastic reduction of the master’s paintings in his 1969 revised edition of the 1935 catalog by Abraham Bredius. The approach of the RRP was even more radical and led to a further reduction of the Rembrandt oeuvre. The three volume A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings, published between 1982 and 1989, provoked much debate and controversies in the art world. In 1993, Bruyn withdrew from the RRP, along with Haak, Levie, and Van Thiel. They left the further organization of the project to their fellow team member Ernst van de Wetering, who advocated a different approach. Apart from his scholarly research and academic activities (in 1979, he was elected Rector of the University of Amsterdam), Bruyn was a member of the board of various organizations and committees. In 1975, he joined the editorial board of the periodical Oud Holland, in which he frequently published articles and book reviews. In 1993, on the occasion of his seventieth birthday, his colleagues and students offered him a special issue of Oud Holland. It was co-edited by Jan Piet Filedt Kok (then director Collections at the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam) and Reindert Falkenburg (then deputy director of the Netherlands Institute of Art History), who both had studied under Bruyn. Bruyn formed the core of the RRP, whose mission was (officially or unofficially) to reduce the number of autograph Rembrandts. Both their methodology and conclusions bothered other long-time Rembrandt scholars, including Jakob Rosenberg, who objected to committee work as a way to establish authenticity. Bruyn’s dissertation studied the historical, cultural, and iconological content of works of art as well as the artistic milieu which determined the stylistic characteristics, direct reflection of J. G. van Gelder’s (his adviser) approach. As an iconologist, he paid particular attention to the relationship between literary traditions, based on ancient and biblical texts, and visual art. In a celebrated 1985 review, Bruyn criticized the book The Art of Describing by Svetlana Alpers for ignoring iconological interpretation. Seeing himself as a “conventional” scholar, Bruyn argued that Alpers’ theory on the descriptive character of Northern art, as distinct from the alleged narrative character of Italian art, failed to take the social and cultural contexts of Dutch art into account.
Selected Bibliography
[dissertation:] Van Eyck problemen: de Levensbron, het werk van een leerling van Jan van Eyck. Utrecht: Dekker & Gumbert, 1957; Le paysage hollandais au XVIIe siècle. Paris: Art et style, 1950; and Emmens, J. A., De Jongh, E., Snoep, D.P. (eds.) Album Amicorum J.G. van Gelder. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1973; [Book review] Oud Holland 99 (1985): 155-160; “Old and New Elements in 16th-century Imagery.” [text written as a paper to be read at the opening session of the colloquium Kunst voor de beeldenstorm held in Amsterdam on 19 November 1986] Oud Holland 102 (1988): 90-113 [also published in] Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 35 (1987): 138-163; et al. (with the collaboration of L. Peese Binkhorst-Hoffscholte) A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings. The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1982-1989; Bruyn, J. (ed.) et al. Een keuze uit dertig jaar aanwinsten Nederlandse musea 1960-1990, verworven met steun van de Vereniging Rembrandt en het Prins Bernhard Fonds. Zwolle: Waanders, 1990.
Sources
Kramer, Hilton. “Experts Debate What Is a Rembrandt.” New York Times (October 25, 1969), p. 31; Levy, Alan. “The Rembrandt Research Project: Old myths, new methods.” ARTnews (September 1976): 35-42; “Prof. Dr. Josua Bruyn zeventig jaar.” Oud Holland 107 (1993): 1-2.
Professor of Art History at the University of Amsterdam (1961-1985); lead art historian for the Rembrandt Research Project (RRP) catalogue raisonné, part of the Stichting Foundation Rembrandt Research Project. Bruyn studied art h
