Full Name: Maltese, Corrado
Gender: male
Date Born: unknown
Date Died: unknown
Home Country/ies: Italy
Subject Area(s): art theory and semiotics
semiotic analysis on the conditions of art historical writing
Condizioni di una storia dell’arte come scienza.1959. Della semiologia alla semantometria. Studi sulla communicazione visiva. Rome, 1983.
Bazin 350-351
semiotic analysis on the conditions of art historical writing
Full Name: Malvasia, Carlo Cesare, Conte
Gender: male
Date Born: 1616
Date Died: 1693
Place Born: Bologna, Emilia-Romagna, Italy
Place Died: Bologna, Emilia-Romagna, Italy
Home Country/ies: Italy
Subject Area(s): biography (general genre), Bolognese, Italian (culture or style), and painting (visual works)
Wrote a history of painting in Bologna through biographies of Bolognese artists in 1678. Malvasia was born to an aristocratic Bolognese family. He gained early fame for his poetry and dabbled in painting as an aristocratic pursuit under Giacinto Campana (b. 1600) and Giacomo Cavedone and the literary academy dei Gelati. After graduating with a law degree, Malvasia went to Rome in 1639 where he further participated in the literary academies (degli Umoristi and dei Fantastici) and meeting Cardinal Giovanni Francesco Ginetti, Cardinal Bernardino Spada (1594-1661) and the artist Alessandro Algardi (1598-1654). From 1647 onward he lectured in Law at the university in Bologna. After publication of an essay related the theological aspects of a painting, Lettera a Monsignor Albergati, 1652, and obtaining a theology degree in 1653, he was appointed a canon in Bologna Cathedral in 1662. Malvasia’s appointment took him to the capitals of the Italian states and contacts with the cultural administrators of the land, including Marco Boschini and Nicolas Régnier, and Cardinal Leopoldo de’ Medici (whom he advised on his collections) and, in 1665, Pierre Cureau de la Chambre, who gained him entré into the French court of Louis XIV and the Académie Royale. During this period, Malvasia collected and researched the artistic life of his native Bologna. This resulted in the 1678 Felsina pittrice, Malvasia’s narrative art history of painting in Bologna. Organized through biographies of Bolognese artists, it is the core primary document on Bolognese artists of the Baroque. Conscious of lives-of-artists books such as the 1550 work of Giorgio Vasari and Giovanni Baglione, Malvasia’s attempts to place Bolognese art at the fore, attracting Florentine supremacy and highlighting Bolognese innovation. He divided his book into four sections, beginning with the primitives, then Francesco Francia, then the Carracci and, ending with the great baroque artists of Malvasia’s generation, Guido Reni, Domenichino, Francesco Albani and Guercino. In 1686 he published Le pitture di Bologna, a “gallery guide” for the artists about whom he had spoken in the Felsina. The guide was tremendously popular and was reprinted seven times in the next hundred years. In 1694, his final art commentary, Il Claustro di S Michele in Bosco di Bologna, on the Caracci school artists, appeared. Malvasia’s strong argument for Bologna caused controversy. Filippo Baldinucci attacked Malvasia’s stance in an Apologia of his Notizie di professori del disegno, as well as the Venetian Marco Boschini (1613-1678), and in 1703, Vincenzo Vittoria (1650-1712) in his Osservazioni sopra il libro della Felsina Pittrice per difesa di Raffaello. Malvasia’s methodology concentrated on documents without forcing a single conclusion, as much of the other art historical encomia had previously done. Giovanni Pietro Bellori, who, in his Vite, used historical material to support his classicist position, whereas Malvasia’s Felsina Pittrice is more empirical and allows a greater freedom of aesthetic viewpoints. Malvasia’s work suffered much in the centuries since its publication. Parts of his work were attacked as forgeries, others decried his idea of eclecticism for the Carracci. Since the 1980s, Malvasia’s work has undergone a period of reassessment and the value of his original ideas and scholarship once again valued. Felsina Pittrice remains one of the core primary texts of the Bolognese Baroque.
[complete bibliography:] Sorbelli, Albano. Inventari dei manoscritti delle biblioteche d’Italia. Florence: L. S. Olschki, 1933, p. liii; Lettera a Monsignor Albergati [. . . ] in ragguaglio d’una pittura fatta ultimamente dal Signor Giovan Andrea Sirani. Bologna: s.n., 1652; Felsina pittrice: Vite de’ pittori bolognesi. 2 vols. Bologna: Per l’erede di Domenico Barbieri, 1678, partial English translation [Reni selections], Enggass, Catherine, and Enggass, Robert, eds. The Life of Guido Reni. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1980, and [Caracci selections], Summerscale, Anne, editor. Malvasia’s Life of the Carracci: Commentary and Translation. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000; Le pitture di Bologna che nella pretesa e rimostrata in hora da altri maggiori antichità ed impareggiabile eccellenza nella pittura, con manifesta evidenza di fatto rendono il Passaggero disingannato ed instrutto. Bologna: per Giacomo Monti, 1686; Il Claustro di S Michele in Bosco di Bologna dipinto dal famoso Ludovico Carracci e da altri maestri usciti dalla sua Scuola. Bologna: Per gli eredi d’Antonio Pisarri, 1694.
Enggass, Catherine, and Enggass, Robert. “Introduction.” The Life of Guido Reni. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1980; Perini, Giovanna. Dictionary of Art; Perini, Giovanna “Central Issues and Peripheral Debates in Seventeenth-century Art Literature.” World Art: Themes of Unity in Adversity. Acts of the XXVI International Congress of the History of Art: Washington, DC, 1986, pp. 139-43; Mahon, Denis. Studies in Seicento Art and Theory. London: 1947; Dempsey, Charles. “Malvasia and the Problem of the Early Raphael and Bologna.” Studies in the History of Art 17 (1986): 57-70
Wrote a history of painting in Bologna through biographies of Bolognese artists in 1678. Malvasia was born to an aristocratic Bolognese family. He gained early fame for his poetry and dabbled in painting as an aristocratic pursuit under Giacinto C
Full Name: Mancini, Giulio
Gender: male
Date Born: 1558
Date Died: 1630
Place Born: Siena, Siena, Tuscany, Italy
Place Died: Rome, Lazio, Italy
Home Country/ies: Italy
Subject Area(s): biography (general genre) and painting (visual works)
Wrote Alcune considerationi intorno a quello che hanno scritto alcuni autori in materia della pittura (1621) on painters lives, critiqued Vasari.
Wrote Alcune considerationi intorno a quello che hanno scritto alcuni autori in materia della pittura (1621) on painters lives, critiqued Vasari.
Full Name: Mandowsky, Erna
Gender: female
Date Born: 1906
Place Born: Hamburg, Germany
Home Country/ies: Germany
Professor of art history, Erwin Panofsky student
0.Metzler
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. 428-9.
Professor of art history, Erwin Panofsky student
Full Name: Manetti di Marabottino, Antonio
Other Names:
Gender: male
Date Born: 06 July 1423
Date Died: 26 May 1497
Place Born: Florence, Tuscany, Italy
Place Died: Florence, Tuscany, Italy
Home Country/ies: Italy
Subject Area(s): biography (general genre) and Renaissance
Biographer of early Renaissance artists including Filippo Brunelleschi. Manetti was born to a wealthy family of Florentine merchants and educated privately; he retained partial interest in a silk warehouse in Florence throughout his life. Through his studies, he knew the architect and Renaissance theorist Filippo Brunelleschi and became interested in architecture. A true Renaissance man, he was a mathematician, astronomer and friend of the great renaissance philosopher Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499). Manetti developed as an authority in architecture and may have even designed buildings, but owning to the popularity of his name in Florence, none can be ascribed to him with certainty. In 1466 he was appointed operaio (Councilor) at the Ospedale degli Innocenti, a Brunelleschi designed building of 1419. Around 1480 Manetti appended his account of a life of Brunelleschi, Vita di Filippo Brunelleschi meant to accompany an earlier anecdotal text possibly by Brunelleschi himself, known as Novella del Grasso. The manuscript ends abruptly at the design for Santo Spirito, either because the latter portion was destroyed or it is unfinished. In 1491 Manetti, working under the title of architectus, was part of a panel to select the façade design for the Cathedral in Florence. During that same time, he wrote a second manuscript, Huomini singhularii in Firenze dal MCCCC. innanzi, a more strictly biographical work. Huomini begins with an Italian translation from the second section of the Latin De origine civitatis Florentiae et de eiusdem famosis civibus by Filippo Villani, and concludes with biographies of theologians and other humanists as well as eight Florentine artists, centered around the person of Brunelleschi. Manetti’s Vite di Filippo Brunelleschi is the first comprehensive biography of a single Italian artist to be written in the early Renaissance (Pacciani). It was the model for the later Vite of Giorgio Vasari. Manetti’s conception of a history of architecture used the familiar standard model of a Greek acme and Roman decline as a segue to Brunelleschi’s Renaissance (“rebirthing”) work. Manetti’s use of first-hand experiences and excerpts of public documents make his art writing a serious art history as opposed to the anecdotes of famous lives popular at the time. His documentation of Brunelleschi’s influence and that of contemporary Florentine culture, illustrates Brunelleschi’s intentional introduction of classical architectural motives into the new Renaissance style. Along with Filarete and later Vasari, Manetti conceived of Renaissance architecture as the civilized rebirth from the barbarian Gothic style (Grodecki). Manetti should not be confused with Antonio di Ciaccheri Manetti (1402-1460), also an architect associated with Brunelleschi works.
Vite di Filippo Brunellesch. (Florence, Bib. N. Cent., MS. II, ii, 325, fols 295r-312v), modern reprint, Vita di Filippo Brunelleschi. Milan: Polifio, 1976, English, Saalman, Howard. The Life of Brunelleschi by Antonio di Tuccio Manetti. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1970; Huomini singhularii in Firenze dal MCCCC. innanzi (Florence, Bib. N. Cent. Conventi Soppressi, G.2. 1501, fols 141r-142r); modern reprint, Milanesi, Gaetano. Operette istoriche edite ed inedite di Antonio Manetti. Florence: Successori Le Monnier, 1887, pp. 159-68.
Kultermann, Udo. The History of Art History. New York: Abaris, 1993, pp. 11, 12, Pacciani, Riccardo. “Manetti, Antonio (di Tuccio).” Dictionary of Art 20: 262-263; Murray, Peter. “Art Historians and Art Critics, IV: ‘XIV uomini singhularii in Firenze.'” Burlington Magazine 99 (1957): 330-36; Tanturli, Giuliano. “Per l’interpretazione storica della Vita del Brunelleschi.” Paragone 26 no. 301 (March 1975): 5-25; Grodecki, Louis. “Definitions and Theories/Historical and Physical Circumstances.” Gothic Architecture. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1977, p. 9; Zervas, Diane Finiello. “The Parte Guelfa Palace, Brunelleschi and Antonio Manetti.” Burlington Magazine 126 no. 977 (August 1984): 494-499.
Contributors: Lee Sorensen
Biographer of early Renaissance artists including Filippo Brunelleschi. Manetti was born to a wealthy family of Florentine merchants and educated privately; he retained partial interest in a silk warehouse in Florence throughout his life. Through
Full Name: Mango, Cyril A.
Gender: male
Date Born: 1928
Place Born: Istanbul, Turkey
Home Country/ies: United Kingdom
Institution(s): Oxford University
Byzantine architecture. New York: H. N. Abrams, 1976.
Contributors: Lee Sorensen
Full Name: MacGregor, Neil
Gender: male
Date Born: unknown
Date Died: unknown
Home Country/ies: United Kingdom
Career(s): art critics, directors (administrators), museum directors, and publishers
Editor of the Burlington Magazine and Director of the National Gallery, London, 1986, and British Museum-. He succeeded Michael Levey.
Editor of the Burlington Magazine and Director of the National Gallery, London, 1986, and British Museum-. He succeeded Michael Levey.
Full Name: Mack, Gerstle
Other Names:
Gender: male
Date Born: 1894
Date Died: 1983
Place Born: San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA
Place Died: New York, NY, USA
Home Country/ies: United States
Subject Area(s): biography (general genre), French (culture or style), painting (visual works), Post-Impressionist, and realism (artistic form of expression)
Biographer of French Realist and Post-Impressionist artists. Mack’s parents were Adolph “Dick” Mack (1858-1948), a pharmacist and owner of a pharmacy, and Clara Gerstle (Mack) (1861-1909), daughter of the Lewis Gerstle, grocery magnate of San Francisco (Gerstle Park, Marin County). Mack attended the University of California before switching to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, from which he received his B. A. in architecture in 1916. He worked as an architectural draftsman in New York until World War I was declared. After serving in the War, he returned to San Francisco where he again did architectural drawing and theater design production. In 1926 he left his architecture to travel to Spain where he made architectural measurements together with Thomas Gibson (1865-1941), producing a book on southern Spanish architecture in 1928. A companion volume for northern Spanish architecture appeared in 1930. Mack did extensive archival research in France, England and the United States on the artist Paul Cézanne, publishing a scholarly yet popular biography in 1935. This met with critical acclaim for its original archival research, standardizing the artist’s life. He followed this with a second biography on Henri Toulouse-Lautrec in 1938. Mack served in the military a second time during World War II, stationed in England with the office of Strategic Services. During this time, he published a history on the Panama Canal. After the war, Mack wrote a third biography of a French artist, Gustave Courbet, in 1951. He authored a book on the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, of which he was a personal survivor, in 1981. Mack died in his Manhattan apartment at age 88. His papers, 1903-1974, are held at the University of California, Berkeley.Mack was the earliest full-length biographer of Cézanne in English. His biography began a series of scholarly English-language-authored biographies on the artist by John Rewald, Jack Lindsay and Linda Nochlin. Mack’s thoroughness as an archival researcher dispelled many stories about the artist, for example, that the artist’s family had descended from a Napoleonic officer and a black woman.
[B. A. thesis:] A Hotel for a California Seaside Resort. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1916; and Gibson, Thomas. Architectural Details of Southern Spain: One Hundred Measured Drawings, One Hundred and Thirteen Photographs. New York: W. Helburn Inc., 1928; Architectural Details of Northern and Central Spain. New York: W. Helburn, Inc., 1930; Paul Cézanne. New York: A. A. Knopf, 1936, [copyright 1935]; Toulouse-Lautrec. London: J. Cape, 1938; Gustave Courbet. New York: Knopf, 1951.
Mack, Gerstle. Lewis and Hannah Gerstle. New York: Profile Press, 1953; “Gerstle Mack, 88, Author, Biographer and Historian.” New York Times February 17, 1983, p. D23.
Biographer of French Realist and Post-Impressionist artists. Mack’s parents were Adolph “Dick” Mack (1858-1948), a pharmacist and owner of a pharmacy, and Clara Gerstle (Mack) (1861-1909), daughter of the Lewis Gerstle, grocery magnate of San Fran
Full Name: Maclagan, Eric, Sir
Other Names:
Gender: male
Date Born: 1879
Date Died: 1951
Place Born: London, Greater London, England, UK
Place Died: Pola de Lena, Asturias, Principado de Asturias, Spain
Home Country/ies: United Kingdom
Subject Area(s): Byzantine (culture or style), Italian (culture or style), Italian Renaissance-Baroque styles, Medieval (European), museums (institutions), and Renaissance
Career(s): directors (administrators) and museum directors
Byzantinist and Italian Renaissance scholar; Director, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 1924-1945. Maclagen was the son of William Dalrymple Maclagan (1826-1910), bishop of Lichfield, and Augusta Anne Barrington. He attended Winchester College, before Christ Church, Oxford, focusing on classics. His personal interest was initially in literature and poetry. He published verse Leaves in the Road, in 1901. After graduating in 1902, an interest in William Blake leading to his study, Blake’s Prophetic Books, Jerusalem, 1904, and Milton, 1907, both with Archibald George Blomefield Russell (1879-1955). He secured a position as assistant in the department of textiles at the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1905, writing A Guide to English Ecclesiastical Embroideries for the Museum in 1907. Maclagan was promoted to the department of architecture and sculpture in 1909, reinstalling the collection of Italian sculpture. His friendship with the poet William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) led to him providing Yeats with the text of Liudprand of Cremona (c. 922-972) in 1910, which became the source for Yeats’ “Sailing to Byzantium” poem. In 1912 Maclagan met the Byzantinist Royall Tyler and his wife in Venice where they toured the monuments. He married Helen Elizabeth Lascelles (1879-1942) in 1913. Maclagen’s second museum catalog, Catalogue of Italian Plaquettes appeared in 1924. During World War I, Maclagan served in the Foreign Office from 1916 and in 1918 at the Ministry of Information as head of the Paris bureau and controller for France. While in France, he met and became friends with the writer Edith Wharton (1862-1937), who was doing relief work in France. He was appointed CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) in 1919. He returned to the Victoria and Albert Museum and, at the retirement of Cecil Harcourt-Smith in 1924, became director. He delivered the Charles Eliot Norton lectures as professor of the same name at Harvard for the 1927-1928 year. Maclagan assigned the completion of his earlier Catalogue of Italian Sculpture, to the department’s assistant keeper Margaret Longhurst, which was published in 1932. He was knighted the following year. His Norton lectures appeared in 1935 as Italian Sculpture of the Renaissance. As a director, Maclagen worked toward broader public appeal for the museum. He instituted sixpenny picture books, free public lectures, and an “object of the week.” He oversaw such exhibitions as the art of the livery companies of the City of London (1926), one on English medieval art (1930), the William Morris centenary exhibition (1934), Eumorfopoulos collection (1936). During World War II, he chaired the fine arts committee of the British Council beginning in 1941 continuing its traveling exhibits after the war. His essay, The Bayeux Tapestry, became a minor best seller, published in 1943 under the King-Penguin series. Maclagen received honorary degrees from Birmingham (LLD, 1944) and Oxford (DLitt, 1945). Following the War, he also hosted an exhibition of sculptures removed from Westminster Abbey for safekeeping in 1945. The same year he was appointed KCVO. A religious man involved in the Anglo-Catholic movement, he combined his interest and skills for the Central Council for the Care of Churches, headquartered in the Victoria and Albert Museum. While traveling in Spain, he died suddenly climbing to the church of Santa Cristina Pola de Lena. He is buried at the British cemetery at Bilbao. He was the first to envisage the system of rearranging the museum according to primary and secondary collections, thereby making the task of obtaining some impression of the museum as a whole a less formidable proposition for the general visitor. This reorganization proved impracticable in the financial climate of the thirties and was not realized until Leigh Ashton reassembled the collections after 1945, when a new field of opportunity was opened and a fresh emphasis was placed upon the whole question of museum display. During Maclagan’s term of office, fresh interest was focused on the museum either by the acquisitions or by the series of distinguished exhibitions which he personally organized. These reflected the fastidious precision of his scholarship and the wide range of his perceptions as a connoisseur. Fluent in French and German, he He was one of the first private collectors to buy the work of Henry Moore and unveiled the painting of the crucifixion by Graham Sutherland in the church of St. Matthew at Northampton. His skill as a bookplate designer resulted in one for the American art historian Bernard Berenson. Maclagan and Longhurst’s Italian sculpture catalog was superseded in 1964 by that of John Pope-Hennessy.
and Longhurst, Margaret. Catalogue of Italian Sculpture. London: Dept. of Architecture and Sculpture, Victoria and Albert Museum, 1932.
Bayley, Stephen. “Vitrol & Ambition: It’s One of the World’s Great Museums [etc.].” The Independent (London), July 28, 2000, p. 1; Cox, Trenchard , and Baker, Ann Pimlott. “Maclagan, Sir Eric Robert Dalrymple (1879-1951).” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 2004; Nelson, Robert. Hagia Sophia, 1850-1950: Holy Wisdom Modern Monument. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004, pp. 132, 162, 171-172.
Byzantinist and Italian Renaissance scholar; Director, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 1924-1945. Maclagen was the son of William Dalrymple Maclagan (1826-1910), bishop of Lichfield, and Augusta Anne Barrington. He attended Winchester College,
Full Name: Maclaren, Neil
Gender: male
Date Born: 1909
Date Died: 1988
Place Born: London, Greater London, England, UK
Place Died: London, Greater London, England, UK
Home Country/ies: United Kingdom
Deputy Keeper of the National Gallery, 1952-1961; responsible for moving two national art collections to wartime safety. MacLaren was raised in Blackheath, London. His father, also Neil MacLaren, was a journalist who founded the London School of Journalism in 1920. The younger MacLaren attended Malvern College and the London University, majoring in English. At the establishment of the Courtauld Institute, MacLaren became one of their first admitted students. He joined the National Gallery, London, in 1935. MacLaren had a particular affinity for Spanish painting. When civil war broke out in Spain, he advised in the removal of the paintings from the Prado to Geneva, Switzerland, in 1939 were they were exhibited at the Musée d’Art et d’histoire there, “Les chefs-d’oeuvre du Musée du Prado.” At the outbreak of World War II, he joined the army, but was released to help safeguard the National Gallery building. Under Gallery Director Kenneth Clark he and another deputy keeper, Martin Davies, supervised the war-time evacuation of paintings to a mine in North Wales. Davies remained in Wales while MacLaren was in charge of the Gallery building in London. During the German Blitz attack in London, he slept in the basement with the Chief Warder. In 1947 he organized the exhibition of “Spanish Paintings from British Collections at the Arts Council of Great Britain.” He married Nina Tarakanova (1911-1994), a Russian former ballerina of Sergei Diaghilev (1872-1929) and his company, the following year. Soon afterward, the Gallery established a conservation department, which MacLaren supervised. As such he weighed in heavily against the Gallery’s cleaning policy. Together with Anthony E. Werner, the gallery’s research chemist, he authored an article on the nature of glazes. The cleaning issue became emotional in some cases, with other scholars, such as Denis Mahon, arguing against and E. H. Gombrich arguing for. MacLaren developed detailed conservation files for every painting including full written details, X-ray, infra-red and ultra-violet photographs when made. He was appointed Deputy Keeper responsible for the Spanish, Dutch and Flemish schools of painting. In 1952 he issued a catalog of the Gallery’s collection in Spanish painting. It revealed many archival discoveries which MacLaren had unearthed. One of the hires in MacLaren’s department was the future director of the National Gallery, Michael Levey. A catalog of the Dutch school appeared by MacLaren in 1960 replacing one of 1929. At the death of Keeper William Pettigrew Gibson in 1960, MacLaren believed himself in succession for the job, despite disputes with the current director Philip Hendy and the other candidate, Davies, senior to him. When Hendy appointed Davies, MacLaren resigned, joining Sotheby’s auction house as their chief adviser on Spanish painting. An ebullient and extrovert personality, MacLaren eschewed the company of other art historians in England, who reciprocated by ignoring his somewhat conservative writings. His catalogs were superseded by newer versions by Allan Braham (1970) and Christopher Brown (1991). In addition to his specialty and devotion to Spanish art, MacLaren was also an authority on the Gallery’s Rubens and Van Dyck pictures.
An Exhibition of Spanish Paintings. London: The Arts Council of Great Britain, 1947; and and Werner, Anthony. “Some Factual Observations about Varnishes and Glazes.” Burlington Magazine 42 (July 1950): ; The Spanish School. London: Printed for the Trustees, 1952; Dutch school, xvii-xix centuries [plates]. 2 vols. London: Publications Dept., National Gallery, 1958, The Dutch School [text]. London: Publications Dept., National Gallery, 1960.
Bazin, Germain. Histoire de l’histoire de l’art; de Vasari à nos jours. Paris: Albin Michel, 1986 p. 515; [obituaries:] Llewellyn, Tim. “Neil MacLaren: Precise Scholar, Fearless Critic, Mischievous Wit.” Guardian (London), October 27, 1988; “Neil MacLaren; Art Galleries at War.” Times (London), November 1 1988; Gould, Cecil. “Appreciation of Neil MacLaren.” Guardian (London), October 28, 1988.
Deputy Keeper of the National Gallery, 1952-1961; responsible for moving two national art collections to wartime safety. MacLaren was raised in Blackheath, London. His father, also Neil MacLaren, was a journalist who founded the London School of J