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Landsberger, Franz

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Landsberger, Franz

Gender: male

Date Born: 14 June 1883

Date Died: 17 March 1964

Place Born: Katowice, Silesian Voivodeship, Poland

Place Died: Cincinnati, Hamilton, OH, USA

Home Country/ies: Germany and United States

Career(s): curators and educators

Institution(s): Hebrew Union College and Jüdisches Museum Berlin

Overview

University lecturer and associate professor; museum director with a focus on Jewish art. He was born in Kattowitz, Germany, which is present-day Katowice, Poland. Landsberger was born in Kattowitz, Germany [modern Katowice, Poland] in 1883 to Adolf Landsberger, a banker and city councilor, and Ida Sachs (1859–1935). Landsberger attended school in Kattowitz and Breslau [modern Wrocław, Poland], completing his abitur in 1903. He studied art history, archaeology, history of literature, and philosophy in Geneva, Berlin, Munich, and Breslau from 1903 to 1907 under Richard Muther and Heinrich Wölfflin. In 1907, Landsberger earned his doctorate from Breslau under Muther. His dissertation, Wilhelm Tischbein: ein Künstlerleben des 18. Jahrhunderts (Wilhelm Tischbein: An Artist’s Life in the 18th Century), was published in Leipzig in 1908. After receiving his doctorate, he attended lectures by Heinrich Wölfflin, whom he eventually regarded as his actual teacher. Landsberger subsequently traveled through Italy, France, Holland, and Switzerland. He married Alice Rothmann (d. 1945) in 1910. In 1912, Landsberger completed his habilitation at Breslau. From 1912 he worked as a private lecturer, and in 1917 he became the editor of the Schlesische Monatshefte. In 1918, Landsberger became an associate professor at the University of Breslau. At the same time, he worked as a teacher at the local art academy. His notable book Heinrich Wölfflin was published in 1924. Landsberger, being Jewish, was dismissed without pension on October 1, 1933 for being a “non-Aryan” under the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service. He subsequently moved to Berlin and developed a close friendship with Max Liebermann. In 1934, Landsberger served as a visiting lecturer at the University of London. From 1935 to 1938 he was the director of the Jüdisches Museum Berlin, succeeding Karl Schwarz (1885–1962) and Erna Stein-Blumenthal (1903–1983). Together with Rachel Wischnitzer (1885–1989) and Irmgard Schüler (b. 1907), he expanded the collection and organized special exhibitions on Max Liebermann, Jewish poster artists, Jewish ancestral portraits, and “One Hundred Years of Jewish Art”, among others. Landsberger began to specialize in Jewish art during this period. In 1935, he published the fundamental discussion Einführung in die jüdische Kunst (Introduction to Jewish Art). In 1938, Landsberger was arrested in the Kristallnacht pogrom and deported to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp for five weeks. He was released due to the intervention of Lady Mary Murray (1865–1956), who invited him to Oxford. Landsberger subsequently traveled to Oxford and stayed there in 1939 as the guest of Lady Murray and her husband, the classical scholar Gilbert Murray (1866–1957). Landsberger emigrated to the United States shortly thereafter. From 1939 to 1958, he worked at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, initially as a research professor and lecturer in Jewish art history. Landsberger married Dorothy Schwalbe Herz in 1946. Two of his most significant books, A History of Jewish Art and Rembrandt, the Jews and the Bible, were published in the same year. From 1947, Landsberger also served as curator and director of the Hebrew Union College Museum, where he expanded the collection through important acquisitions. With the help of his friend Leo Baeck (1873–1956), he transferred the remains of the Jüdisches Museum Berlin to Cincinnati. Landsberger continued to organize special exhibitions at the museum and publish research on Jewish art history until his death in 1964.

Landsberger was a pioneer in Jewish art history, especially in the context of legitimizing it as a part of Jewish studies. He laid important groundwork for the future of the field, which was described before his arrival as “a desert . . . broken only here and there by oases”. In addition to his significant scholarly contributions, Landsberger was noted for his kindness (Gutmann). Ulrike Wendland observed that Landsberger only appeared to be interested in Jewish art after persecution.

Selected Bibliography

[dissertation:] Wilhelm Tischbein: ein Künstlerleben des 18. Jahrhunderts. Leipzig: Klinkhardt und Biermann, 1908;
Der St. Galler Folchart-Psalter: eine Initialenstudie. St. Gallen: Fehr, 1912;
Impressionismus und Expressionismus. Leipzig: Klinkhardt und Biermann, 1919;
Die künstlerischen Probleme der italienischen Renaissance. Halle: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1922;
Heinrich Wölfflin. Berlin: Gottschalk, 1924;
Jacopo della Quercia. Leipzig: E. A. Seemann, 1924;
Vom Wesen der Plastik: ein kunstpädagogischer Versuch . Vienna: Rikola Verlag, 1924;
Breslau. Leipzig: E. A. Seemann, 1926;
and Grisebach, August, and Günther Grundmann: Die Kunst in Schlesien. Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 1927;
Die Kunst der Goethezeit: Kunst und Kunstanschauung von 1750 bis 1830. Leipzig: Insel-Verlag, 1931;
Einführung in die jüdische Kunst. Berlin: Philo Verlag, 1935;
“Jewish Art.” Jewish Layman 15, no. 1 (1940): 16–18;
“Jewish Artists Before the Period of Emancipation.” Hebrew Union College Annual 16 (1941): 321–414;
A History of Jewish Art. Cincinnati: The Union of American Hebrew Congregations, 1946;
Rembrandt, the Jews and the Bible. Translated by Felix N. Gerson. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1946;
Jewish Art Objects from the Collection of the Hebrew Union College. Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College, 1947;
Jewish Ceremonial Art. Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1950;
“Rembrandt and Josephus.” Art Bulletin 36 (1954): 62–63.

Sources

Gutmann, Joseph. “Franz Landsberger 1883–1964.” Studies in Bibliography and Booklore 8, no. 1 (Spring 1966): 3–9;
Scheyer, Ernst. “Prof. Dr. Franz Landsberger ✝.” Schlesien 9 (1964): 126;
Wiese, Erich. “Franz Landsberger.” Weltkunst 34 (1964): 308;
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. 411–6.

Contributors: Lee Sorensen and Lindsay Dial

Lane, Barbara Miller

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Lane, Barbara Miller

Gender: female

Date Born: 1934

Home Country/ies: United States

Institution(s): Bryn Mawr College

Overview

Selected Bibliography

Architecture and Politics in Germany, 1918-1945. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968.

Sources

KRG, 128 mentioned; KMP, 88 cited

Contributors: Lee Sorensen

Lane, Edward Arthur

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Lane, Edward Arthur

Other Names:

Arthur Lane

Gender: male

Date Born: 1909

Date Died: 1963

Place Died: London, Greater London, England, UK

Home Country/ies: United Kingdom

Subject Area(s): ceramic ware (visual works), ceramics (object genre), and pottery (visual works)

Career(s): curators

Overview

Keeper of the Department of Ceramics at the Victoria and Albert Museum, 1950-1963. Lane was the son of Reverend E. A. Lane. After attending St. John’s School, Leatherhead, he continued at St. John’s College, Cambridge, on a scholarship, excelling in classical studies. In 1932 he became a scholar at the British School at Athens, then under its young director, Humfry Payne. He followed Payne’s remarkable research on Archaic art, publishing a groundbreaking study of his own on Laconian vase painting in the Annual of the British School. In 1934 Lane was appointed to the Victoria and Albert Museum as assistant keeper in the department of Ceramics under Bernard Rackham. Both as a scholar and curator, he made major changes to the collection. He participated in the 1937 excavations under Leonard Wooley (1880-1960) of Al Mina, Syria, opening up an interest in Islamic art. A 1939 exhibition of tiles established his reputation as a museum person. When Britain entered World War II the same year, Lane worked for R. A. F. intelligence, rising to the rank of Squadron Leader. After the War, Lane began publishing in the Faber series on pottery. These included Early Islamic Pottery, 1947, and the tiny Style in Pottery,1948, a modest but scholarly work on the topic. When Keeper of the Department William B. Honey (1889-1956) retired in 1950, Lane succeeded him at the Museum and as editor of the Faber book series. His next book, Italian Porcelain, was issued in 1954. Lane bitterly opposed the promotion of Trenchard Cox to Director and Secretary of the V&A in 1955. In 1957, he issued Later Islamic Pottery, a more substantial work on Islamic art than his 1948 book. English Porcelain Figures of the Eighteenth Century followed in 1961. He committed suicide at age 53. Lane was a reserved and high-strung personality. Although he had a following of friends, he was, as George Ireland described him, “brilliant but depressive.” As a scholar, he devoted himself to archival work; his Italian porcelain book published research from the Ginori factory near Florence, the first in any language. His work in Islamic ceramics continued the scholarship of Robert Lockhart Hobson (1872-1941).

Selected Bibliography

A Guide to the Collection of Tiles. London: Victoria and Albert Museum. Ceramics Dept., 1939; Early Islamic Pottery: Mesopotamia, Egypt and Persia. London: Faber and Faber, 1947; Later Islamic Pottery: Persia, Syria, Egypt, Turkey. London, Faber and Faber 1957; Greek Pottery. New York : Pitman, 1948; English Porcelain Figures of the Eighteenth Century. New York: T. Yoseloff, 1961.

Sources

Ireland, George. “Sir Trenchard Cox.” The Independent (London), December 23, 1995, p. 14; [obituary:] “Mr. Arthur Lane, Ceramic Studies.” Times (London) March 8, 1963, p. 14.

Lang, Susanne

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Lang, Susanne K.

Gender: female

Date Born: 16 October 1907

Date Died: 29 November 1995

Place Born: Vienna, Vienna state, Austria

Place Died: Unknown

Home Country/ies: Austria and Israel

Subject Area(s): architecture (object genre) and sculpture (visual works)

Institution(s): Kunsthistorisches Institut Vienna

Overview

Architectural historian; worked closely and collaborated on several works with Nikolaus Pevsner. Susanne Lang was born in Vienna. She attended Mädchen-Realgymnasium in Josefstadt, where she received her Abitur in 1926. Upon her graduation, Lang continued her studies at the Kunsthistorisches Institut, specifically in art history and ethnology. In 1931, she completed her degree, and published her dissertation titled Voraussetzungen und Entwicklung des mittelalterlichen Städtebaus in Deutschland (Determinants and development of medieval urban planning in Germany) under the (second) Vienna School scholar Josef Strzygowski.

Because of her Jewish heritage, Lang was persecuted and forced to flee Austria after the Anschluss of 1938. She emigrated to England, where she began a significant professional relationship with fellow German immigrant and art historian Nikolaus Pevsner. The two collaborated on many works, with the most significant being Pevsner’s 46-volume series Buildings of England. Lang was also published many times in the Architectural Review, where Pevsner served as an editor.

During her time in London, Lang also worked extensively with historians at the Warburg Institute, where she published in the early “astonishing variety and scope of architectural studies” including seminal studies by Rudolf Wittkower, James Ackerman and George Kubler (Eck). In 1950, her work The early publications of the temples at Paestum was published within the annual, collaborative Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, further demonstrating her ties to the institute.

Lang’s residency in England had a measurable influence on the subjects of her writings, evident in works such as The Principles of the Gothic revival in England (1966) and The genesis of English landscape garden (1973). Overall, the majority of Lang’s scholarly works are featured in larger works by other authors, and she never published her own book. Viewed inferior as a female art historian, a significant portion of her writing in these larger works remains uncredited. After some time in England, Lang ultimately moved to Israel where she would live until her death, while still making frequent trips to England.

Selected Bibliography

”The genesis of English landscape garden.” in, Pevsner, Nikolas, ed. The picturesque garden and its influence outside the British isles. Second Colloquium on the history of landscape architecture, 1973. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 1974, pp. 1-29;
”The Principles of the Gothic revival in England.”, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 25, 1966, pp. 240-267;
“The Early Publications of the Temples at Paestum,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 13.1/2 (1950): 48–64.;
Buildings of england (series) [researched various volumes];

Sources

Nikolaus Pevsner miscellaneous papers, circa 1957-1979, The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, Accession no. 2003.M.34;
van Eck, Caroline. “The Warburg Institute and Architectural History.” Common Knowledge 18, no. 1 (2012): 134.;
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. 351-355.;

Contributors: Helen Jennings and Lee Sorensen

Langbehn, Julius

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Langbehn, Julius

Gender: male

Date Born: 1851

Date Died: 1907

Place Born: Hadersleben, Syddanmark, Germany

Place Died: Rosenheim, Rhineland Palatinate, Germany

Home Country/ies: Germany

Subject Area(s): Modern (style or period) and racial discrimination

Overview

Professor and Rembrandt scholar; wrote a popular, racist attack of modern art and art museums. Langbehn studied art history and anthropology at the university in Kiel before receiving his doctorate at the in Munich. Among art historians who adopted Nietzschean values of art, perhaps the worst was Langbehn. Poorly educated and highly opinionated, Langbehn anonymously published a book in 1890 attacking modern art on racial grounds, a book which took the German art history world by storm. Rembrandt als Erzieher (Rembrandt as Educator), deplored the state of contemporary art production, suggesting that, Rembrandt, an example of the southern German “race,” was part of a pure Volk least defiled by racial intermixing. It criticized museums as dead places of art, too bound by history to reflect art. Racial tracts were not uncommon in late-19th century European social and cultural though. Nevertheless, Langbehn’s book attracted praise not only from the conservative right but, for various reasons, from a variety of important art historians of the period. Wilhelm Bode, the assembler of the vast Prussian art collections in Berlin, praised its ideal of the German spirit. The progressive architect and architectural theorist Hermann Muthesius cited it continuously in his reform articles. Even Karl Ernst Osthaus, the future founder of the Folkwang-Museum, credited Langbehn as critical to his own development. Rembrandt als Erzieher when through some 66,000 in thirty-nine editions. Learning Nietzsche was in a mental institution in Jena, Germany, Langbehn traveled to the asylum to talk to him and his mother who was caring for him. Langbehn, who cultivated a mistrust of medical doctors, argued strenuously with both the philosopher and his mother to leave the facility until Nietzsche himself threw Langbehn out. Langbehn had been able to convince family friends that releasing the philosopher to him would lead to his cure (citing among other reason’s the Jewishness of the institution’s doctor). Had Langbehn not insisted on sole control of Nietzsche and his royalties fortune, he might have received permission. His attempt to free the master foiled, Langbehn now purported a hatred of Neitzsche’s philosophy and converted to Roman Catholicism. Given how Langbehn perverted the German philosopher’s writings, this may be truer than what many have seen. His subsequent book of poetry, 40 Lieder von einem Deutschen (Forty Poems of a German) ran into trouble with its erotic content. Langbehn died of stomach cancer in 1907. Rembrandt als Erzieher was praised by the Nazi’s during the Third Reich and reprinted throughout the Second World War in Germany.

Selected Bibliography

Rembrandt als Erzieher, von einem Deutschen. Leipzig: C.L. Hirschfeld, 1890; 40 Lieder von einem Deutschen. Dresden: Verlag der Druckerei Glöss, 1891.

Sources

Stern, Fritz. “Julius Langbehn and Germanic Irrationalism,” in The Politics of Cultural Despair. 2nd ed. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974, pp. 97-204; Sheehan, James J. Museums in the German Art World: From the End of the Old Regime to the Rise of Modernism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000, pp. 142-43; Kultermann, Udo. The History of Art History. New York: Abaris, 1993, pp. 131-2.

Lange, Julius

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Lange, Julius

Gender: male

Date Born: 1838

Date Died: 1896

Place Born: Vordingborg, Seeland, Denmark

Place Died: Copenhagen, Hovedstaden, Denmark

Home Country/ies: Denmark

Career(s): educators

Overview

professor, University of Copenhagen; “Law of Frontality” theory

Selected Bibliography

Billedkunstens fremstilling af menneskeskikkelson i dens aeldste periode indtil højdepunkete af den graeske kunst. Copenhagen: Lunos Kgl. hof-bogtrykkeri (f. Dreyer), 1892.Billedkunstens fremstilling af menneskeskikkelson i den graeske junsts første storhedstid. Copenhagen: Lunos Kgl. hof-bogtrykkeri (F. Dreyer), 1898.Menneskefiguren i kunstens historie fra den graeske kunsts anden blomstringstid indtil vort aarhundrede. Copenhagen: Bojesen, 1899.the above three works were translated into a 2 volume German set:Darstellung des Menschen in der älteren griechischen Kunst. Translated by Mathilde Mann. Edited and with a Foreword by Adolf Fürtwangler. Strassburg: Heitz, 1899.Die menschliche Gestalt in der Geschichte der Kunst von zweiten Blütezeit der griechischen Kunst bis zum XIX. Jahrhundert. Translated by Mathilde Mann. Edited by P. Kobke. Strassburg: Heitz, 1903.

Sources

DIN, 208

professor, University of Copenhagen; “Law of Frontality” theory

Ladner, Gerhart

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Ladner, Gerhart

Other Names:

Gerhart Ladner

Gender: male

Date Born: 1905

Date Died: 1993

Place Born: Vienna, Vienna state, Austria

Place Died: Los Angeles, CA, USA

Home Country/ies: Germany

Subject Area(s): depictions (visual works), iconography, Medieval (European), theory, and visual culture

Overview

Medievalist. Ladner was the son of wealthy and cultured Jewish parents of Bohemian decent. His father Oscar Leopold Ladner, was a Viennese factory owner; his mother was Alice Burian (Ladner) (d. 1936). His family vacationed with among others, Sigmund Freud’s and he knew Anna Freud well. Ladner attended the Bundesgymnasium XIX in Vienna, graduating in 1924. He early fell under the spell of the poet Stefan George and contemplated a career as a poet. He began studying history, archaeology and general history in 1929 under the so-called Vienna School art historians Julius Alwin von Schlosser and Josef Rudolf Thomas Strzygowski and Karl Maria Swoboda. At the same time, he studied diplomatics exegesis with the medievalist Hans Hirsch (1878-1940) at the Austrian Institute for Historicial Studies, taking a position the same year at the Monumenta Germaniae Historica, working under its director, the medievalist church historian Paul Fridolin Kehr (1860-1944). Ladner wrote his thesis under Schlosser, Die italienische Malerei im 11. Jahrhunderts, accepted for his Ph.D., in 1930 and published in 1931 and converted from a non-practicing Jew to Roman Catholicism. His first post-doctoral position was in the employ of the Kunsthistorisches Museum, under August Oktav Loehr, cataloging portrait medals. In 1934 he entered the Österreichischen Historischen Institut in Rom (Austrian Institute in Rome), where he began his research project on papal portrait iconography in the middle ages. Ladner published his habilitation in 1938, warmly acknowledging Hirsch, on medieval church reform, assuming a privatdozent position at the university in medieval history. With the annexation of Austria in March by Hitler, Ladner had his venia legendi (permission to lecture) withdrawn because he was “non-Aryan.” He fled the Third Reich the same year to London making contact with the Warburg Institute. He moved to Canada to teach early Christian and medieval art history and history at the Pontifical Institute in Toronto. He rose to assistant professor of medieval history and archaeology in 1940 at the University of Toronto. The first volume of his study of papal portraits, begun in 1934, appeared in 1941. Between 1943 and 1946 he fulfilled Canadian war service in World War II in army intelligence. During this time he married Jocelyn Mary Plummer in 1942 (d. 1980). After the war he resettled in the United States, initially teaching at Notre Dame University in Indiana as assistant and then associate professor. He moved to Howard University in Washgington, D. C. as full professor, 1951, and then Fordham University in 1952. He was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N. J., 1960-1961, following an initial association in the 1950s. His 1962 Wimmer lecture at UCLA summarized his research on image representation. It was published as Ad Imaginem Dei: The Image of Man in Medieval Art in 1965. In 1963 he accepted a position as professor of art history at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where he remained until his emeritus confirmation in 1974.

Ladner’s early writing shows him engaged in Geistesgeschichte, or the history of spiritual and intellectual ideas, evident in his first articles in 1931 on the history of ideas. His conversion to Roman Catholicism drove his two great research projects, the iconography of the medieval popes and the idea of reform in the middle ages (Speculum). His interdisciplinarity, especially seeing art history in terms of world and cultural history, using a variety of research techniques, is a direct result of Vienna School art historians of the 1930s. Ladner is best known for his Idea of Reform: its Impact on Christian Thought, a “study of the ways and means employed in medieval civilization to reform culture and politics, both sacred and profane, within an understood sacred order” (Van Engen, Viator).

Selected Bibliography

[complete bibliography:] “Bibliography of Gerhart Burian Ladner,” Van Engen, John. “Images and Ideas: The Achievements of Gerhart Burian Ladner.” Viator 20 (1989): 108-115; [dissertation:] Die italienische Malerei im 11. Jahrhundert. Vienna: Anton Schroll, 1931; [habilitation:] Theologie und Politik vor dem Investiturstreit, Abendmahlstreit, Kirchenreform, Cluni und Heinrich III. Baden bei Wien: R.M. Rohrer, 1936; I ritratti dei papi nell’antichità e nel medioevo (Die Papstbildnisse des Altertums und des Mittelalters). 3 vols. Vatican City: Pontificio istituto di archeologia cristiana, 1941-1984. vol. 1. Dalle origini fino alla fine della lotta per le investiture, vol. 2. Von Innozenz II. zu Benedikt XI. vol.. 3. Addenda et Corrigenda, Anhänge und Exkurse, Schlusskapitel: Papstikonographie und allgemeine Portrátikonographie im Mittelalter; “The Concept of the Image in the Greek Fathers and the Byzantine Iconoclastic Controversy.” Dumbarton Oaks papers 7 (1953):1-34; The Idea of Reform: its Impact on Christian Thought and Action in the Age of the Fathers. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1959; Ad Imaginem Dei: The Image of Man in Medieval Art. Latrobe, PA: Archabbey Press, 1965; Images and Ideas in the Middle Ages: Selected Studies in History and Art. Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1983; Handbuch der frühchristlichen Symbolik: Gott, Kosmos, Mensch. Stuttgart: Belser, 1992, English, God, Cosmos, and Humankind: the World of early Christian Symbolism. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995.

Sources

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. 101; Kleinbauer, W. Eugene. Research Guide to the History of Western Art. Sources of Information in the Humanities, no. 2. Chicago: American Library Association, 1982, pp. 157-8; Van Engen, John. “Images and Ideas: The Achievements of Gerhart Burian Ladner.” Viator 20 (1989): 85-116: Ladner, Gerhart. Erinnerungen. Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1994; Benson, Robert L., and Constable, Giles, and Van Engen, John. “Gerhart Burian Ladner.” Memoirs of Fellows and Corresponding Fellows of the Medieval Academy of America. Speculum 71, no. 3 (July 1996): 802-804; 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. 405-11; personal correspondence, Michael Ladner, October 2011..

Contributors: Lee Sorensen

Lafenestre, Georges E.

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Lafenestre, Georges E.

Other Names:

Georges Edouard Lafenestre

Gender: male

Date Born: 1837

Date Died: 1919

Place Born: Orléans, Centre-Val de Loire, France

Place Died: Bourg-la-Reine, Île-de-France, France

Home Country/ies: France

Career(s): art critics and curators

Overview

Curator at the Louvre; professor of art history; art critic; poet. Lafenestre was born in a wholesale dealer’s family. He attended the Lycée in Orleans and subsequently the Lycée Charlemagne in Paris, where he graduated with a bachelor’s degree. Being in poor health, he was discouraged from attending the École normale. After having obtained a second degree of bachelor of law, he did not continue his studies. By that time he was orphaned. In 1859, at age 22, he left Paris and moved to Barbizon, where his nephew, Gaston Lafenestre, introduced him to his circle of artists. Lafenestre soon began to travel abroad, to England, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and, most frequently, to Italy, where he thoroughly explored the rich culture of the country. A passionate lover of art and literature, he became an art critic and he began publishing poems. In 1870 he became secretary to the director of the Beaux-Arts administration (Ministère de l’Instruction publique et des Beaux-Arts), and soon, after his marriage, under-manager of the Beaux-Arts bureau. He held this post until 1876. In 1880 he was appointed inspector of the Beaux-Arts and chief commissioner of the French and international Beaux-Arts exhibitions. In France, however, his duties soon diminished, because the Salons became separated from government control from 1881 onwards. From this year until 1885 Lafenestre instead traveled to Vienna, Munich, Amsterdam, and Antwerp, to be present at international exhibitions. In 1885 he published. in the collection of the Bibliothèque de l’Enseignement des Beaux-Arts, La peinture italienne, an overview of Italian painting, from antiquity until the end of the fifteenth century,. In 1886 his career considerably changed when he was appointed adjunct curator at the Louvre, and professor of the history of painting at the École du Louvre. In that year he published a prize winning monograph on Titan, La vie et l’oeuvre de Titien. In 1888 he rose to the rank of curator, a position he held until 1907. In 1889 he in addition became professor of esthetics and of the history of art at the Collège de France. In 1892 he was elected a member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts. In the 1890s and early 1900s, in collaboration with Eugène Richtenberger, he published a series of seven catalogs of European painting, La peinture en Europe. In 1904 he was actively involved in the exhibition, “Les Primitifs français”, in collaboration with Henri Bouchot. This exhibition was a patriotic response to the 1902 exhibition held in Bruges, Belgium, of the Flemish Primitives. Lafenestre wrote the introduction of the Paris catalog, and in that same year he also published Les Primitifs à Bruges et à Paris. A monograph on Jean Fouquet followed in 1905, Jehan Fouquet. In 1908, after his retirement, he was appointed curator at the Condé Museum in Chantilly, near Paris. In 1911 he wrote a second history of Italian art, focusing on Saint Francis and Savonarola, who both, in his view, had deeply influenced Italian culture and art, Saint Francois d’Assise et Savonarole, inspirateurs de l’art italien. In 1920, a two-volume album of masterpieces of European painting in the Louvre appeared. Lafenestre was the author of the critical documentation of the paintings in the first volume. The preface, which contains Lafenestre’s biography, is written by Léonce Bénédite, and the introduction by Louis Demonts. Lafenestre’s La Peinture italienne is a well-written art history, in the tradition of Giorgio Vasari, focusing on the artists, their lives and their works. It was one of the early required texts to be listed in the course catalog for the art history classes of Princeton University. In the preface Lafenestre explains that his overview is based on recent studies in the field as well as on his own observations of most of the art works. The book is illustrated with engravings of paintings, including frescoes, some of which nowadays are faded or damaged. In the introduction to the 1904 catalog, Les Primitifs français, Lafenestre pays homage to the national tradition of French painting, tracing its history from the first centuries up to the sixteenth century. He chided, however, “those stupid exaggerations of patriotic vanity” (“…nous voulons, avant tout, nous garder de ces sottes exaggerations de vanité patriotique…”).

Selected Bibliography

La Peinture italienne. Paris: A. Quantin, 1885; La vie et l’oeuvre de Titien. Paris: Quantin, 1886; and Richtenberger, Eugène. La peinture en Europe. 1. Le Louvre, 2. Florence, 3. La Belgique, 4. Venise, 5. La Hollande, 6. Rome (Édifices religieux), 7. Rome (Palais et Musées); “Introduction” in Bouchot, Henry and others. Exposition des Primitifs français. Paris: Gazette des Beaux-Arts, 1904: pp. i-xxxii; Les Primitifs à Bruges et à Paris, 1900-1902-1904; vieux maîtres de France et des Pays-Bas. Paris: Librairie de l’art ancien et moderne, 1904; Jehan Fouquet. Paris: Librairie de l’art ancien et moderne, 1905; Saint Francois d’Assise et Savonarole, inspirateurs de l’art italien. Paris: Librairie Hachette et Cie, 1911; and Bénédite, Léonce, and Demonts, Louis. Le Louvre, le musée et les chefs d’Åuvre de la peinture/ The Louvre. The Museum and the Masterpieces in Paintings. 1. Paris: Lapina et fils, 1920.

Sources

Haskell, Francis. “Patriotism and the Art Exhibition” in The Ephemeral Museum: Old Master Paintings and the Rise of the Art Exhibition. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000, pp. 105-106; [obituary :] S. R. Revue Archéologique 9 (1919): 396; Bénédite, Léonce. “Georges Lafenestre (1857-1919)” in Lafenestre, George. Le Louvre, le musée et les chefs d’Åuvre de la peinture/ The Louvre. The Museum and the Masterpieces in Paintings 1. Paris: Lapina et fils, 1920, pp. 1-34.

Contributors: Monique Daniels

Laffan, William M.

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Laffan, William M.

Other Names:

William Mackay Laffan

Gender: male

Date Born: 1848

Date Died: 1909

Home Country/ies: United States

Career(s): art collectors and curators

Institution(s): Trinity College Dublin

Overview

Collector, (Met curator?) and friend of J. P. Morgan.

Selected Bibliography

Engravings on wood, by members of the Society of American wood-engravers, with an introduction and descriptive text by William M. Laffan. Published: New York, Harper and brothers, 1887; and Bushell, Stephen Wootton. Catalogue of the Morgan collection of Chinese porcelains. Published: New York : Privately printed by the order of Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan, 1904-1911. [auction collection] Catalogue of the ancient and modern paintings and other objects of art collected by the late William M. Laffan to be sold at unrestricted public sale on the dates herein stated [January 20, 21, 1911] The sale will be conducted by Mr. Thomas E. Kirby, of the American art association, managers. Published: New York, 1911.

Sources

mentioned, Tomkins, Calvin. Merchants and Masterpieces: The Story of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. 2nd. ed. New York: Henry Holt, 1989, p. 136.

Contributors: Lee Sorensen

Collector, (Met curator?) and friend of J. P. Morgan.

Lafontaine-Dosogne, Jacqueline

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Lafontaine-Dosogne, Jacqueline

Other Names:

Jacqueline Lafontaine-Dosogne

Gender: female

Date Born: 1928

Date Died: 1995

Place Born: Eigenbrakel, Belgium

Place Died: Brussels, Brussels-Capital Region, Belgium

Home Country/ies: Belgium

Overview

Head of the section of Christian Art at the Musées Royaux d’Art et d’Histoire/ Koninklijke Musea voor Kunst en Geschiedenis (Royal Museums of Art and History) in Brussels and Professor of Byzantine Art at the Catholic University of Louvain (Louvain-la-Neuve), Belgium. Lafontaine-Dosogne studied classics along with history of art and archaeology at the Free University of Brussels. As a Byzantine scholar, she was a pupil of Charles Delvoye. She also studied with André Grabar, whose elaborate studies in iconography she held in high esteem. In 1961, she obtained her doctoral degree with a dissertation on the iconographical theme of the childhood of the Virgin Mary in the Byzantine Empire and in the West. This study, Iconographie de l’Enfance de la Vierge dans l’Empire byzantin et en Occident, was published by the Royal Academy of Belgium in 1964-1965. Prior to this publication, the theme of the Virgin’s childhood already had received much attention in her first monograph, dated 1959, which dealt with Peintures médiévales dans le temple dit de la Fortune Virile à Rome. Working as a researcher of the National Fund for Scientific Research, between 1958 and 1966, she traveled extensively and was a visiting fellow at the Dumbarton Oaks Center for Byzantine Studies in Washington DC in 1960, 1961, and 1962. She made several study trips to all areas once covered by the Byzantine Empire, in order to investigate archaeological sites, mosaics and mural paintings in churches and monasteries. In 1965, she participated in an archaeological expedition to the region of Antioch. This resulted in the 1967 publication, in collaboration with Bernard Orgels: Itinéraires archéologiques dans la région d’Antioche. Recherches sur le monastère et sur l’iconographie de S. Syméon Stylite le Jeune. This work includes an inventory of archaeological sites near Antioch, an elaborate study of the monastery of Saint Symeon Stylites the Younger, and iconographical research on this saint. From 1967 to 1972, she was a researcher at the Institut Royal du Patrimoine Artistique / Koninklijk Instituut voor het Kunstpatrimonium (Royal Institute for the Study and Conservation of Belgium’s Artistic Heritage), and in 1972 she began her career as curator at the Royal Museums of Art and History in Brussels, where she worked until December 1, 1993. One year earlier, in 1971, she started teaching early Christian art, Byzantine and Eastern Christian art, and Iconology at the Catholic University of Louvain, first in a teaching position and subsequently, from 1989 until her retirement in 1994, as professor. In 1987, she published a historical survey of Byzantine and Eastern Christian art. This handbook, Histoire de l’art byzantin et chrétien d’Orient, was based on an earlier work which she co-authored with Fritz Volbach for the third volume of the Propyläen Kunstgeschichte, published in 1968 as Byzanz und der christliche Osten. A revised edition of the handbook appeared a few months after the author’s death, in 1995. Lafontaine-Dosogne was one of the directors of the Europalia 82 exhibition on Greece, held in the Royal Museums of Art and History: Splendeur de Byzance / Luister van Byzantium. She also was the editor-in-chief of the catalog and one of the major contributors. Lafontaine-Dosogne also published on western mediaeval art in the region between the Meuse and the Rhine, paying attention to the relations with the Byzantine world and Byzantine artistic influence. This was the topic of her contribution to the Festschrift for Kurt Weitzmann, which appeared in 1995, after her death. Another posthumous publication was her presentation at a 1993 congress East and West in the Crusader States (Hernen Castle, The Netherlands), in which she surveyed the illuminated manuscripts and icons of the Monastery of Saint Catherine at Mount Sinai between the 10th and 13th centuries. The Acta of this congress, published in 1996, are dedicated to her memory. Lafontaine-Dosogne was an active participant in several associations in Belgium and abroad. In 1967, she became a member of the Académie Royale d’Archéologie de Belgique. She served this institution in different capacities, including the directorship, from 1978 onwards, of the Revue Belge d’Archéologie et d’Histoire de l’Art, and, from 1983 to 1985, the presidency of the Academy. Lafontaine-Dosogne was a very conscientious and meticulous scholar who carried out her research with dedication and thoroughness. In her iconographical and iconological studies, she knew to make use of biblical, apocryphal, and liturgical texts as important sources of interpretation.

Selected Bibliography

[For a complete list, see] “Publications de Jacqueline Dosogne-Lafontaine” Revue Belge d’Archéologie et d’Histoire de l’Art 64 (1995): 5-10, and “Bibliographie de Jaqueline Lafontaine-Dosogne.” Bulletin des Musées royaux d’Art et d’Histoire/Bulletin van de Koninklijke Musea voor Kunst en Geschiedenis 65 (1994): 13-20; Peintures médiévales dans le temple dit de la Fortune Virile à Rome. (études de Philologie, d’Archéologie et d’Histoire anciennes, 6) Brussels-Rome: Institut Historique Belge de Rome, 1959; Iconographie de l’Enfance de la Vierge dans l’Empire byzantin et en Occident. 2 vols. Brussels, Académie Royale de Belgique, Classe des Beaux-Arts, 1964-1965. Second revised edition, 1992; Itinéraires archéologiques dans la région d’Antioche. Recherches sur le monastère et sur l’iconographie de S. Syméon Stylite le Jeune. Avec la collaboration de Bernard Orgels. (Bibliothèque de Byzantion, 4) Brussels: éditions de Byzantion, 1967; and Volbach, Wolfgang. Byzanz und der christliche Osten. Berlin: Propyläen Verlag, 1968; (ed.) Splendeur de Byzance / Luister van Byzantium. [catalog] Brussels: Musées Royaux d’Art et d’Histoire / Koninklijke Musea voor Kunst en Geschiedenis, 1982. Histoire de l’art byzantin et chrétien d’Orient. Louvain-la-Neuve: Institut d’études médiévales de l’Université Catholique de Louvain, 1987. Second revised edition: Louvain-la-Neuve: Institut Orientaliste de l’Université Catholique de Louvain, 1995; “L’influence artistique byzantine dans la région Meuse-Rhin du VIIe au XIIIe siècle.” in Moss, Christopher and Kiefer, Katherine (eds.) Byzantine East, Latin West: Art Historical Studies in Honor of Kurt Weitzmann. Princeton, NJ: Dept. of Art and Archaeology, Princeton University, 1995, pp. 181-192; “Le Monastère du Sinaï. Creuset de culture chrétienne (Xe – XIIIe siècle)” in Ciggaar, Krijnie; Davids, Adelbert; Teule, Herman (eds.) East and West in the Crusader States. Context – Contacts – Confrontations. Acta of the congress held at Hernen Castle in May 1993. Louvain: Peeters, 1996, pp. 103-129.

Sources

Colaert, Maurice “Jacqueline Dosogne-Lafontaine (1928-1995)” Revue Belge d’Archéologie et d’Histoire de l’Art 64: (1995) 2-4; Donceel-Voute, Pauline “In memoriam” Revue des archéologues et historiens d’art de Louvain 28 (1995): 131-134; Dufrenne, Suzy “Jacqueline Lafontaine-Dosogne (1928-1995)” in Antiquité tardive 4 (1996): 11-12 and in Cahiers de civilization médiévale 39 (1996): 178-179; Mekhitarian, Arpag. “In Memoriam Jacqueline Lafontaine-Dosogne.” Bulletin des Musées royaux d’Art et d’Histoire/Bulletin van de Koninklijke Musea voor Kunst en Geschiedenis 65 (1995): 7-11.

Contributors: Monique Daniels

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