Full Name: Michon, Étienne
Gender: male
Date Born: 1865
Date Died: 1939
Home Country/ies: France
Subject Area(s): Classical
Career(s): curators
Classical art curator at the Louvre. Michon graduated from the École normale supérieure in Paris where his classmate was the future art historian Paul Jamot.
Classical art curator at the Louvre. Michon graduated from the École normale supérieure in Paris where his classmate was the future art historian Paul Jamot.
Full Name: Millon, Henry Armand
Other Names:
Gender: male
Date Born: 1927
Date Died: 2018
Place Born: Altoona, Blair, PA, USA
Home Country/ies: United States
Subject Area(s): architecture (object genre) and sculpture (visual works)
Architectural historian and first director, CASVA, 1979-2000. Millon was raised in Altoona, PA where his father was an aerial photographer and his mother, whose father published of a French-language newspaper in New York, was a housewife. After high school with World War II still active, he entered a US Navy ROTC program at Tulane University in 1944 assigned to active duty until1946. He married Judith Rice (Millon). After the war, he returned Tulane gaining degrees in English, Physics, and Architecture. He entered Harvard University receiving a Master’s in Architecture and Urban Design, and a second Master’s degree (and eventually Ph.D.) in History of Art. A Fulbright Fellowship and a subsequent fellowship at the American Academy in Rome allowed him to study in Italy for three years. He returned to begining teaching at Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a Visiting Professor in 1960. He published his survey Baroque and Rococo Architecture in 1961 followed by Key Monuments of the History of Architecture in 1964, Millon served as the president of the Society of Architectural Historians for 1968-1969.Between 1974 and 1977 he was director of the American Academy in Rome. Millon was named the first dean of CASVA, the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art, Washington DC in 1979. He retired from the Center 21 years later.
Filippo Juvarra. Drawings from the Roman Period, Part I (1984), Part II, with A. Griseri, S. McPhee, and M. Viale Ferrero (1999), three exhibition catalogues, Michelangelo Architect, with C.H. Smyth (1988), The Renaissance from Brunelleschi to Michelangelo, with V. Lampugnani (1994), The Triumph of the Baroque (1999), and numerous articles.
Millon has held grants from the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Institute for Advanced Study, the Getty Research Institute, and a Senior Fulbright. He has received awards from the American Institute of Architects; Academie des sciences morale et politique, Institut de France; and the College Art Association.
Millon served as President, Society of Architectural Historians; Convenor, Architectural Drawings Advisory Group; President, Foundation for Documents of Architecture; Scientific Secretary, Thesarus Artis Universalis Working Group of the International Committee for the History of Art; Vice-Chair, Council on American Overseas Research Centers; Chair, Dumbarton Oaks Senior Fellows Committee, Program in History of Landscape Architecture; President, International Union of Academies of Archaeology, History and History of Art in Rome; President, University Film Study Center; Vice-Chair, Boston Landmarks Commission, and Co-Chair, Advisory Committee, Cambridge Architectural Historical Survey. He currently serves as Curator, American Philosophical Society.
A Life of Learning: Charles Homer Haskins Lecture for 2002. New York: American Council of Learned Societies, 2002;
[obituary:] “Henry Millon.” Member News. Society of Architectural Historians (website) http://www.sah.org/about-sah/member-news/2018/04/09/obituary-henry-a.-millon-1927-2018; A Life of Learning: Charles Homer Haskins Lecture for 2002. New York: American Council of Learned Societies, 2002;
Architectural historian and first director, CASVA, 1979-2000. Millon was raised in Altoona, PA where his father was an aerial photographer and his mother, whose father published of a French-language newspaper in New York, was a housewife. After hi
Full Name: Muther, Richard
Gender: male
Date Born: 1860
Date Died: 1909
Place Born: Ohrdruf, Thuringia, Germany
Place Died: Miedzygorze, Poland
Home Country/ies: Germany
Gründerzeit era art historian of survey art books. He was born in Wölfelsgrund bei Glatz, Germany, or present day Miedzygorze, Poland. Muther studied in Heidelberg between 1877-78, and, after a tour of Italy, moved to Leipzig in 1881 where he studied under Anton Springer, writing his dissertation under Springer on the artist Anton Graff. Muther worked as a privatdozent in Munich, publishing his 1883 habilitation on illustrated Bibles. He secured a position as curator in the prints and drawings department of the Alte Pinakothek in Munich in 1885. Both he and Heinrich Wölfflin competed for the art-historian position at Munich, which was ultimately given to Berthold Riehl. Muther wrote for the local Münchner Neuesten Nachrichten paper where he vehemently criticized the provincial art scene as well as the art historians and critics Moritz Carrière and Friedrich Pecht. He published a private guide to the Alte Pinakothek and then the Berlin museum, Der Cicerone in der Gemadegalerie in Berlin, 1889, the latter of which its director, Wilhelm Bode, criticized as facile. In 1893-94 Muther issued his survey Geschichte der Malerei im 19. Jahrhundert (immediately translated into English and other languages) followed by other overviews of specific areas such as Belgian painting, British painting, etc. These books were among the first surveys of modern art in Europe and were praised by the writers Hugo von Hofmannstahl and his friend, Rainer Maria Rilke. Art historians such as Georg Dehio deplored them. Muther quickly became the popular spokesman for modern art. However, he did little primary research (he was rather anti-academic) on his artists and his books are full of mistakes and wandering personal interpretation. He was appointed professor of art history at Breslau (modern Wrocław, Poland) in 1895. His attempts to succeed Herman Grimm in Berlin were foiled and in 1896 the director of the Magdenburg art museum Theodor Volbehr and Seeman publishers accused him of plagiarizing their work which led to a formal reprimand in his position. Muther accused his detractors of Muther-hunting “Muther Hetze.” Muther edited a series of pocket-sized histories of artists, the Sammlung illustrierter Monographien, gave Julius Meier-Graefe his first opportunity to write about French art. Muther adopted a sentimental style of writing, typical of the Gründerzeit (Germany’s “Guilded Age”), an age of the foundation of modern Germany, and consolidation of bourgeois values. His writing style became particularly popular with art journalists. He wept in front of a Velázquez. No connoisseur, his student and friend Willy Uhde, reported him easily duped by forgeries. Kulterman writes that his writing exceeded the bounds of good taste and was unflatteringly confessional. His description of pictures focused on the lurid and erotic, as did the illustrations he used in his books. Muther focused mostly on the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, terming it the age of “Alteherrenkunst” (old man’s art). At his best, he was attuned to the cultural currents of the eras about which he wrote. He characterized the religious painting of Spain, for example as reflecting the dichotomies of the Spanish monarchy: Catholicism and absolutism.
[dissertation:] Anton Graff: ein Beitrag zur Kunstgeschichte des achtzehnten Jahrhunderts. Leipzig: E.A. Seemann, 1881; [habilitation:] Die ältesten deutschen Bilder-Bibeln: bibliographisch und kunstgeschichtlich. Munich: M. Huttler, 1883; Die deutsche Bücherillustration der Gothik und Frührenaissance: (1460-1530). Munich: Georg Hirth, 1884, English, German Book Illustration of the Gothic Period and the Early Renaissance (1460-1530). Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1972; Ein Jahrhundert französischer Malerei. Berlin: S. Fischer, 1901; Rosenhagen, Hans, ed. Aufsätze über bildende Kunst. 3 vols. Berlin: J. Ladyschnikow, 1914; Der Cicerone in der Gemadegalerie in Berlin. Munich: Hirth, 1889; Geschichte der Malerei. 5 vols. Leipzig: G. J. Göschen, 1899-1906, English, The History of Painting from the Fourth to the Early Nineteenth Century. 2 vols. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1907; Rembrandt: ein Künstlerleben. Berlin: E. Fleischel, 1904; Studien und Kritiken. Vienna: Wiener Verlag, 1900-1901; Geschichte der Malerei im 19. Jahrhundert. Published: München: G. Hirth, 1893-’94, English, The History of Modern Painting. 3 vols. London: Henry and Co., 1895-96.
Metzler Kunsthistoriker Lexikon: zweihundert Porträts deutschsprachiger Autoren aus vier Jahrhunderten. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1999, pp. 277-79; Kultermann, Udo. The History of Art History. New York: Abaris, 1993, p. 133; Uhde, Wilhelm. Von Bismarck bis Picasso: Erinnerungen und Bekenntnisse. Zürich: Verlag Oprecht, 1938, p. 95; Matthäi, Adelbert. “Muther und die deutsche Kunstwissenschaft: ein Beitrag zur Klärung der ‘Muther-Hetze’.” Die Grenzboten 55 (1896): 122-28; Schleinitz, Rotraud. Richard Muther: ein provokativer Kunstschriftsteller zur Zeit der Münchener Secession: die “Geschichte der Malerei im XIX. Jahrhundert”: Kunstgeschichte oder Kampfgeschichte? Hildesheim: G. Olms, 1993; “Richard Muther.” in, Hüttinger, Eduard and Boehm, Gottfried. Porträts und Profile: zur Geschichte der Kunstgeschichte. St. Gallen: Erker, 1992, pp. 22-56.
Gründerzeit era art historian of survey art books. He was born in Wölfelsgrund bei Glatz, Germany, or present day Miedzygorze, Poland. Muther studied in Heidelberg between 1877-78, and, after a tour of Italy, moved to Leipzig in 1881 wher
Full Name: Mütherich, Florentine
Other Names:
Gender: female
Date Born: 1915
Place Born: Bestwig, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany
Home Country/ies: Germany
Subject Area(s): manuscripts (documents), Medieval (European), and Romanesque
Medievalist; specialist in Romanesque manuscript illumination. Mütherich wrote her Ph.D. in Berlin under Wilhelm Pinder, graduating in 1940. Her dissertation topic was on goldwork of the Rheinland areas during the reign of the Hohenstaufen kings. After World War II, when the Nazi NSDAP headquarters in Munich was turned into an art-historical research center, the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte, she was made a member in 1949. She worked there, under its director, Ludwig H. Heydenreich, remaining until 1980. Mütherich helped build the reputation of the Zentralinstitut into one of the most important post-war research centers for German art. She became the editor of the corpus of Carolingian illuminated manuscripts with the Harvard scholar Wilhelm Reinhold Walter Koehler. Mütherich was a co-editor of the art journal Kunstchronik from 1954 to 1970. In 1962 she began publishing with the medievalist Percy Ernst Schramm an inventory of royal German portraits. In 1966 she lectured at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, the university in Munich. Mütherich was named honorary professor there in 1969. She taught as a visiting professor at Columbia University, New York, between 1976 and 1982.
[bibliography to 1984:] “Bibliographie Florentine Mütherich.” Studien zur mittelalterlichen Kunst 800-1250: Festschrift für Florentine Mütherich zum 70. Geburtstag. Munich: Prestel, 1985, pp. 263-264; [dissertation:] Die Ornamentik der rheinischen Goldschmiedekunst in der Stauferzeit. Berlin, 1940, published, Würzburg: K. Triltsch, 1941; and Gaehde, Joachim E. Carolingian Painting. New York: G. Braziller, 1976; Sakramentar von Metz. Fragment. Ms. Lat. 1141, Bibliothèque nationale. Paris: Vollständige Faksimile-Ausgabe [with] Graz, Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt, 1972; Das Evangeliar Heinrichs des Löwen und das mittelalterliche Herrscherbild. Munich: Prestel, 1986; and Koehler, Wilhelm R. W.. Die karolingischen Miniaturen. 6 vols. Berli: Deutscher Verein für Kunstwissenschaft, 1958 ff; and Dachs, Karl, and Bloch, Peter. Das Perikopenbuch Heinrichs II.: CLM 4452 der Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek München. Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer, 1994; and Klemm, Elizabeth, and Dachs, Karl. Das Quedlinburger Evangeliar: das Samuhel-Evangeliar aus dem Quedlinburger Dom. Munich: Prestel, 1991; and Schramm, Percy Ernst. Denkmale der deutschen Könige und Kaiser. 2 vols. Veröffentlichungen des Zentralinstituts für Kunstgeschichte in München 2, 7. Munich: Prestel, 1962-1978.
Sauerländer, Willibald. “Vorwort.” Studien zur mittelalterlichen Kunst 800-1250: Festschrift für Florentine Mütherich zum 70. Geburtstag. Munich: Prestel, 1985, pp.9-10.
Contributors: Lee Sorensen
Medievalist; specialist in Romanesque manuscript illumination. Mütherich wrote her Ph.D. in Berlin under Wilhelm Pinder, graduating in 1940. Her dissertation topic was on goldwork of the Rheinland areas during the reign of t
Full Name: Muthesius, Hermann
Other Names:
Gender: male
Date Born: 1861
Date Died: 1927
Place Born: Grossneuhaus, Thuringia, Germany [vicinity of Erfurt]
Place Died: Berlin, Germany
Home Country/ies: Germany
Subject Area(s): architecture (object genre), art theory, and sculpture (visual works)
Architect, architectural historian and theorist. His father was a mason and small building contractor who encouraged him to go into architecture. After graduating from the Realgymnasium in Weimar, he studied art history and philosophy at Friedrich Wilhelm University, Berlin, 1881-1883. He spent a year of military service before pursuing architecture at the Technische Hochschule in Charlottenburg (Berlin), and working in the office of Paul Wallot. Muthesis joined the firm Ende & Böckmann, a major Berlin architectural office. He was sent to Tokyo between 1887 and 1891, where, among his major designs was a Gothic Revival German church. He the Prussian Ministry of Public Works at his return to Germany, gaining a stipend to study in Italy in 1895. He married a concert singer, Anna Trippenbach and was appointed by the Kaiser to the German Embassy in London’s technical attaché in 1896, assigned to report on English art and technical achievements. He and Anna settled in Hammersmith, using his time in England to study the architects immediately before him, Philip Webb and R. Norman Shaw, as well as those more contemporary, C. F. A. Voysey, Edwin Lutyens and W. R. Lethaby. His first published work was the result of his Italian travels, Italienische Reise-Eindrücke, 1898. His early foray to publicize British contemporary building appeared as Die englische Baukunst der Gegenwart in 1900. Muthesius achieved a Ph.D. under Cornelius Gurlitt in Dresden under Gurlitt’s innovative program to award architectural history degrees to architects. He followed this with his treatise (again published in Germany), Stilarchitektur und Baukunst (1902), praising the arts & crafts ideas of William Morris as it fought against shoddy mechanically produced art. Unlike Morris, however he accepted the qualities of some machine-produced arts, anticipating industrial design. Muthesius returned to Germany in 1903, establishing a private architectural practice and working for the Prussian Ministry of Trade. He published his three-volume Das englische Haus beginning in 1904. The book examined the British house as a product of its society, proclaiming the style as the future of domicile building. Muthesius’ enthusiasm for England was met with alarm in Germany; copies were restricted in conservative Berlin academic libraries as late as the 1920s. Muthesius was not a form-follows-function theorist, the architect to him always maintained his status as an artist. His appreciation for the great stylists of the age, particularly Charles Rennie Mackintosh, with whom he became friends, exceeded the more rational-approach architects. Muthesius returned to architecture, designing the the Seefeld House (1904) in Berlin, heavily influenced by the English country style. Other urban and suburban house commissions followed. In 1907, he published Landhaus und Garten, outlining the English garden as used in domestic architecture. The same year he lectured at the Handelshochschule, Berlin, praising new construction methods and materials such as steel and reinforced concrete. The Fachverband für die wirtschaftlichen Interessen des Kunstgewerbes (Association for the Economic Interests of the Arts and Crafts) attacked him as being disloyal to German products. The ensuing controversy (the “Muthesius Affair”) led to the withdrawal of Muthesius supporters, influential designers, from the Fachverband, founding the Deutscher Werkbund, to bring quality design standards to mass-produced objects. Muthesius continued to move away from the Jugendstil concept of modernizing ornament. The Werkbund Conference of 1914, however, led by Henry Van de Velde and others, rejected his industrial design views. The conclusion of World War I dealt a death knell to the gentrified comfort of both the Werkbund and Muthesius’ elegant country-style homes. He continued to write, including his most popular book, Wie baue ich mein Haus? 1917, a handbook for home building, and Kann ich auch jetzt noch mein Haus bauen? 1920, encouraging home standards in the dismal economics that followed World War I. He was killed in a road accident after visiting a site in Berlin and is buried in the Friedhof Nikolassee in the city. His grand-nephew is the architectural historian Stefan Muthesius (b. 1939). Muthesius’ three principle publications were all on English formal arts. The first, Die Englische Baukunst der Gegenwart was a folio publication of all types of British buildings. The second, Die neuere kirchliche Baukunst in England, focused on modern church building. The third, Das englische Haus, was the most groundbreaking, approaching architecture through the example of 19th-century British house as an expression of the society. It emphasized the functional and practical aspects in architecture, most evident in domicile design. Though praised in England, such a sociological approach to design and interpretation threatened German architectural theorists. He drew from the architectural histories of British historians, such as Reginald T. Blomfield and his The Formal Garden in England, 1897, for his work on Garden history. As an architect, Muthesius did not always follow his theory that houses should adhere to standard types.
[complete bibliography:] “Bibliography.” Style-Architecture and Building-Art: Transformations of Architecture in the Nineteenth Century and its Present Condition. Santa Monica, CA: Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities, 1994, pp. 107-126; Die englische Baukunst der Gegenwart: Beispiele neuer englischer Profanbauten. Leipzig: Cosmos, 1900; Stilarchitektur und Baukunst: Wandlungen der Architektur im XIX. Jahrhundert und ihr heutiger Standpunkt. Mülheim-Ruhr: K. Schimmelpfeng, 1902, English, Style-Architecture and Building-Art: Transformations of Architecture in the Nineteenth Century and its Present Condition. Santa Monica, CA: Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities, 1994; Das englische Haus. 3 vols. Berlin: E. Wasmuth, 1904-5, English, The English House. New York: Rizzoli, 1979; Das moderne Landhaus und seine innere Ausstattung. Munich: F. Bruckmann A.-G., 1905; Landhaus und Garten, Beispiele neuzeitlicher Landhäuser nebst Grundrissen, Innenräumen und Gärten. Munich: F. Bruckmann, 1907; Die Zukunft der deutschen Form. Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1915.
Posener, Julius. “Hermann Muthesius.” Architect’s Year-Book 10 (1961): 45-51; Hubrich, Hans-Joachim. Hermann Muthesius: die Schriften zu Architektur, Kunstgewerbe, Industrie in der “Neuen Bewegung”. Berlin: Mann, 1981; Anderson, Stanford. “Introduction.” Style-Architecture and Building-Art: Transformations of Architecture in the Nineteenth Century and its Present Condition. Santa Monica, CA: Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities, 1994, pp. 2-6; Schneider, Uwe. “Hermann Muthesius and the Introduction of the English Arts & Crafts Garden to Germany.” Garden History 28, no. 1 (Summer, 2000): 57-72.
Architect, architectural historian and theorist. His father was a mason and small building contractor who encouraged him to go into architecture. After graduating from the Realgymnasium in Weimar, he studied art history and philosophy at Friedrich
Full Name: Mylōnas, Paulos M.
Gender: male
Date Born: 1898
Date Died: unknown
Marilyn Aronberg Lavin described Mylōnas as one of “great art historians of the earlier generation.”
Athos and its Monastic Institutions: through Old Engravings and Other Works of Art. Athens: Printed by I. Makris Papadiamantopoulou, 1963.
“Marilyn Aronberg Lavin,” Contemporary Authors.
Marilyn Aronberg Lavin described Mylōnas as one of “great art historians of the earlier generation.”
Full Name: Müntz, Eugène
Other Names:
Gender: male
Date Born: 11 June 1845
Date Died: 30 October 1902
Place Born: Soultz-sous-Forêts, Alsace, Grand Est, France
Place Died: Paris, Île-de-France, France
Home Country/ies: France
Subject Area(s): ancient, documentaries (documents), documentary (general concept), Early Christian, Italian (culture or style), Italian Renaissance-Baroque styles, Renaissance, and Roman (ancient Italian culture or period)
Documentary art historian of Roman, early Christian, and Italian Renaissance art. Müntz went to Paris in 1857 to study law, but after brief study became interested in art, and devoted the rest of his life to art-historical research. His early contributation to the journal Revue Alsacienne brought him notoriety. In 1875, he studied at the newly-founded école Française in Rome (founded by Albert Dumont), among fellow students such as father Louis Duchesne (1843-1922), later a director of the school. Making a study of the manuscripts at the Vatican Archives and Library, Müntz became fascinated with the art history of Italy. His first monograph, Les Arts à la cour des papes began appearing in 1875. It profoundly proved the role of the popes in the creation of the Italian Renaissance. He was appointed principal librarian and keeper of the archives and collections at the école des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1876. Between Les Arts à la cour des papes Müntz issued Precurseurs de la Renaissance in 1881 and Raphael. Müntz’s writing entered an English-language readership with a translation of his Raphael book the following year. Les Historiens et les critiques de Raphael published in 1884, an early historiography, in which Müntz defended his contemporary art historians against the emerging connoisseurship trend of Giovanni Morelli. He succeeded Hippolyte Taine as the chair of aesthetics in 1885, whose postitivism he had methodologically opposed (through 1892). His popular reputation as an art historian in France was made with another multi-volume work, Histoire de l’art en Italie pendant la Renaissance, beginning with Les Primitifs in 1888. The young Wilhelm Vöge met Müntz in 1893 while researching his book on sculpture. Müntz published extensively on topics ranging from Roman art to contemporary French art, however he specialized in Florentine painters such as Leonardo da Vinci and Raphael. As faculty at the Sorbonne, his students include Louis Dimier. Müntz wrote several books and articles about painters, as well as collectors, including the collections of the Medici family and the Avignon Papacy. By his death in 1902, Müntz had written over 200 scholarly art-historical publications. Müntz belongs to the school of art historians that includes Carl Nicolaus Heinrich Justi and Max Dvořák who focused on the study of art in a cultural context in the spirit of Jacob Burckhardt, opposing positivism of Taine. Together with Gaetano Milanesi, he pioneered the modern (documentary) study of Italian art history. His knowledge of original documents, memoranda, inventories, and contracts in Italian archvies resulted in one of the first serious histories of Italian art (Gillet). The bulk of his publishing was popular and his views of artists overall was not original, the way his contemporary, John Addington Symonds was. Müntz viewed Rome center of artistic creation in the Renaissance, a view which hampered his apprecation of Venice and Siena.
Les Arts à la cour des papes aux XVe et XVIe siècle. 4 vols. Paris: Ernest Leroux, éditeur, 1875-1898; Raphaël, biographie critique. Paris: H. Laurens, [1881], English: Raphael: His Life, Works and Time. London: Chapman & Hall, 1882; Donatello. Paris: Librairie de l’art, 1885;L’Italie, les primitifs. 1888; Histoire de l’art pendant la Renaissance. Paris: Hachette, vol. 1 Les Primitifs, 1888, 2, L’Age d’Or, 1891, 3, La Fin de la Renaissance, 1892;. Léonardo da Vinci: l’artiste, le penseur, le savant. Paris: Hachette, 1899, English: Leonardo da Vinci: Artist, Thinker, Man of Science. 2 vols. London: Heinnemann, 1898; edited., Les Artistes célèbres. 57 vols. Paris: Librairie de l’art, 1886-1906.
Gillet, Louis. “Eugène Müntz.” Catholic Encylcopedia; 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. 91 cited, 92; Kleinbauer, W. Eugene. Research Guide to the History of Western Art. Sources of Information in the Humanities, no. 2. Chicago: American Library Association, 1982, p. 146 mentioned; Bazin, Germain. Histoire de l’histoire de l’art: de Vasari à nos jours. Paris: Albin Michel, 1986, p. 145-6; The Dictonary of Art.
Documentary art historian of Roman, early Christian, and Italian Renaissance art. Müntz went to Paris in 1857 to study law, but after brief study became interested in art, and devoted the rest of his life to art-historical research. His early cont
Full Name: Münz, Ludwig
Gender: male
Date Born: 1889
Date Died: 1957
Place Born: Vienna, Vienna state, Austria
Place Died: Munich, Bavaria, Germany
Home Country/ies: Austria
Subject Area(s): Dutch (culture or style)
Professor of Art History at the Vienna Academy, Director of its gallery; Rembrandt scholar. Münz’s father and mother were Bernhard Münz, Chief editor for the Neue Wiener Tagblatt (newspaper) and Josefine Labin (Münz). After graduation from a humanities Gymnasium in Vienna, Münz entered the University in Vienna around 1908 concentrating on a law degree. He enlisted in the Austrian army in 1912 and was assigned to the reserves. Returning to the University, he completed his law degree in 1914 and, already having begun a study of art history, planned to pursue it next. The eruption of World War I, however, resulted in his recall to the army. He fought with distinction and was wounded in action. After the war, he resumed study in Vienna under Max Dvořák. Dvořák died in 1921 andMünz moved to the University of Hamburg and its connections with the Warburg Library under Fritz Saxl and Erwin Panofsky. He continued to research a dissertation topic on Rembrandt’s influence in eighteenth-century art. His attempt to graduate at Hamburg in 1923 was thwarted by the faculty who failed to accept his dissertation, partially due to issues of antisemitism (Wendland). Münz published his first article, one on the drawings of Rembrandt and Bols, in 1924. He returned to Vienna in 1926 teaching a private teacher and supported by his family. In 1931 he edited the critical edition of the important book, Das holländische Gruppenporträt (The Dutch Portrait Group) by Aloïs Riegl and, after 1933, the literary estate of his friend, the Viennese architect Adolf Loos (1870-1933). Münz reorganized the antiquities collection of the Kunstgewerbemuseum (Arts and Industry Museum) in Vienna with Ernst von Garger, which was regarded as a model of its kind (Burlington Magazine). He became close acquaintences of the influential Vienna mayor Karl Krauss and Oskar Kokoschka. Münz harbored an interest in the psychology of art and particularly of artistic creation. After five years of study, his book on how blind children create sculpture, Die plastischen Arbeiten Blinder, appeared in 1934 with the art education Viktor Löwenfeld (1903-1960). He married Maria Fijala Zornig in 1937. He produced another innovative books, Die Kunst Rembrandts und Goethes Sehen, on Goethe’s interpretation of Rembrandt’s art. Münz’s opposition to National Socialism–intellectual and religious (he was Jewish)–was overt before the 1938 Anschluss. After then, he escaped Austria to England with the help of friends. He taught and wrote, but was supported by his fellow countryman in England, Antoine Seilern. He continued special-subjects research on the drawing of mental patients at Maudsley Mental Hospital in London. At the outbreak of the war with England, Münz was interned in 1940 as an enemy alien, released in 1941 by the Warburg Institute, now resituated in London. During the war Münz researched Rembrandt etchings and those of his followers At the conclusion of World War II, Münz was recalled to Austria by the ministry of education to be the director of the academy of fine arts. He set about rebuilding the Academy, figuratively and literally from war damage. He set about organizing exhibitions and writing guides for the public which were both scholarly and introductory. His book on Rembrandt etchings was published in 1952 as a two-volume set; it remains a significant work on the artist’s drawings and Münz’s major work. In 1954 he was selected to publish the volume on Rembrandt for the Abrams series on individual artsts, Library of Great Painters. He was awarded the title of Professor in 1955 by the Austrian President. Shorty after opening a discussion session at Rembrandt congress at the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte, Münz suffered a heart attack and died before many of his colleagues. His book on the drawings of Pieter Bruegel was published posthumously. Münz had the reputation of being a difficult personality. He did not allow for those less knowledgeable than he to hold forth opinions unchallenged.
Rembrandt’s Etchings: Reproductions of the Whole Original Etched work by Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, 1606-1669. 2 vols. London; Phaidon Press, 1952; Rembrandt. New York: Abrams 1954; [Bruegel, Pieter:] The Drawings. London: Phaidon Press, 1961. 0.Metzler
Novotny, Fritz. “Einleitung.” in, Münz, Ludwig. Bruegel Zeichnungen. Cologne: Phaidon, 1962; 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. 448-451; N. M. “Dr Ludwig Münz.” Burlington Magazine 99 no. 657 (December 1957), pp. 419-420.
Professor of Art History at the Vienna Academy, Director of its gallery; Rembrandt scholar. Münz’s father and mother were Bernhard Münz, Chief editor for the Neue Wiener Tagblatt (newspaper) and Josefine Labin (Münz). After graduation fro
Full Name: Muraro, Michaelangelo
Gender: male
Date Born: 1913
Date Died: 1991
Place Born: Sossano, Vicenza, Veneto, Italy
Place Died: Venice, Veneto, Italy
Home Country/ies: Italy
Subject Area(s): Ancient Italian, architecture (object genre), drawings (visual works), Early Western World, Italian (culture or style), Mediterranean (Early Western World), painting (visual works), sculpture (visual works), Venetian (Republic, culture or style), and Viennese
Historian of Venetian architecture, painting, and drawing. A student of Giuseppe Fiocco, Muraro received his degree from the University of Padua in 1937, and later studied at the Scuola Archaeological Italiana in Athens, and the Scuola e Filologica delle Venezie. At the end of World War II, Murano dedicated himself to the preservation of Venetian architecture, organizing exhibitions that highlighted the Renaissance villas in the Veneto. In 1956, he traveled to the United States, where he worked with Erwin Panofsky to present his research to an American audience. He was appointed Director of the Galleria Giorgio Franchetti in Venice, and helped the Ca’ d’Oro develop into a museum. His scholarship on the art and architecture of Venice also included studies of the paintings of Titian and Carpaccio, as well as medieval Venetian sculpture and 17-18th century drawings.
Venetian Villas: the History and the Culture. Introduction by James S. Ackerman. New York: Rizzoli.
Rosand, David. Michelangelo Muraro. Burlington Magazine 133, no. 1061: 517-18 (1991); The Dictionary of Art ; Pilo, Giuseppe. Michelangelo Muraro. Arte documento 1991, no. 5: 288.
Contributors: LaNitra Michele Walker
Historian of Venetian architecture, painting, and drawing. A student of Giuseppe Fiocco, Muraro received his degree from the University of Padua in 1937, and later studied at the Scuola Archaeological Italiana in Athens, and
Full Name: Murray, Alexander Stuart
Gender: male
Date Born: 1841
Date Died: 1904
Home Country/ies: United Kingdom
Subject Area(s): Italian (culture or style)
Together with other British and Italian art historians, he revised the 1843 John Murray Guide to Rome in 1894.
revised section on “Sculpture.”; A Handbook of Rome and its Environs. 15th ed. London: John Murray, 1894.
Together with other British and Italian art historians, he revised the 1843 John Murray Guide to Rome in 1894.