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Swift, Emerson H.

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Swift, Emerson H.

Other Names:

Emerson H. Swift

Gender: male

Date Born: 1889

Date Died: 1975

Place Born: West Orange, Essex, NJ, USA

Place Died: Gilroy, Santa Clara, CA, USA

Home Country/ies: United States

Subject Area(s): Classical and Medieval (European)

Career(s): educators

Overview

Columbia University professor of classical and early medieval art history. Swift attended Williams College, Williamstown, MA, receiving his B. A. in classics in 1912. He traveled to Greece the same year to study at the American School in Athens under Bert Hodge Hill (1874-1958), the director, and Carl. W. Blegen (1887-1971), secretary. Under Blegen, Swift investigated the channels of the fountain Peirene. In 1913 he accompanied Blegen and Jacob G. Schurman (1854-1942), United States Ambassador to Greece, to Istanbul. There he developed a fascination with Byzantine art in addition to classical art, though publications in this area would not appear until the 1930s. Under Rhys Carpenter, he explored Acrocorinth. He returned to the United States in 1915 to complete his dissertation at Princeton University. In 1916, an article, “Marble Head at Corinth” adumbrated his dissertation, accepted in 1921, on Roman Imperial statuary. His dissertation appeared as a series of articles in the American Journal of Archaeology between 1921 and 1922. These articles led to regular courses in Roman art at Columbia University. In 1926 he joined the faculty of Columbia. His first article on Byzantium, “Byzantine Gold Mosaics,” appeared in 1934. His research with Carpenter was published in 1936 as Carpenter and Bon’s Corinth III: The Defenses of Acrocorinth. In 1940 he published his book on the Hagia Sophia. His Roman Sources of Christian Art was issued in 1951. He retired from Columbia in 1957. Swift lived in Princeton, N. J., until 1961 when he moved to California. In 1964 his early research at the American School was published in Hill’s book on Corinth, The Springs: Peirene, Sacred Spring and Glauke. Swift died at age 86. Swift stood on the traditional side of the famous “Orient oder Rom” debate on the origins of early Christian iconography. Whereas the Byzantinists Josef Rudolf Thomas Strzygowski and Charles Rufus Morey contended that early Christian stylistic forms were drawn from western Asian sources, Emerson asserted that the form was principally western in derivation with (perhaps) an Oriental overlay (Gutmann). Contemporary scholarship has supported Asianists-theory and not Emerson.

Selected Bibliography

[dissertation:] A Group of Roman Imperial Statues at Corinth. Princeton, 1921; Hagia Sophia. New York: Columbia University Press, 1940; “Byzantine Gold Mosaic.” American Journal of Archaeology 38, no. 1 (January 1934): 81-82; [research published in:] Carpenter, Rhys, and Bon, Antoine. The Defenses of Acrocorinth and the Lower Town. Corinth 3 pt. 2. Cambridge, MA: American School of Classical Studies at Athens/Harvard University Press, 1936; “Bronze Doors of the Gate of the Horologium at Hagia Sophia.” Art Bulletin 19 (June 1937): 136-147; Roman Sources of Christian Art. New York: Columbia University Press, 1951; [research published in:] The Springs: Peirene, Sacred Spring, Glauke. Corinth 1 pt. 6. Princeton, NJ: American School of Classical Studies at Athens, 1964.

Sources

[obituary:] I. R. “Emerson Howland Swift.” American Journal of Archaeology 80 no. 2 (Spring, 1976): 197; [calling him “Harry Emerson”] Gutmann, Joseph. “Early Christian and Jewish Art.” in Attridge, Harold W., and Hata, Gohei, eds. Eusebíus, Christianity, and Judaism. Cleveland: Wayne State University Press, p. 271.

Swillens, P. T. A.

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Swillens, P. T. A.

Other Names:

Pieter T. A. Swillens

Gender: male

Date Born: 1890

Date Died: 1963

Place Born: Utrecht, Belgium

Home Country/ies: Netherlands

Career(s): curators

Overview

Self educated art historian, amanuensis, designer and keeper of the Realia Collections at the Art Historical Institute at Utrecht University. Swillens obtained a degree in drawing at the Utrecht School for Applied Arts. He also was a musician who played the oboe in the Utrecht Orchestra, and published various articles on the history of music, mostly focusing on his home city Utrecht. Swillens decided to dedicate his active life to the visual arts, when he, in 1918, joined the Art historical Institute at Utrecht University as a volunteering assistant of Willem Vogelsang. Swillens’ task was to provide and to keep instructive materials needed for the art-historical education of the students, such as slides and reproductions. Vogelsang also ordered him to make models, plaster casts, and technical drawings, the latter to visualize the rules of the perspective. In addition, Swillens began to collect, mainly at his own expenses, all sorts of tools and materials, used in studios of painters, sculptors and engravers, and other documentation on visual arts, like prints, drawings, paintings and books. In 1923, Swillens became an employee, with the title of amanuensis. This post was upgraded to teekenaar (draughtsman, or designer) in 1929. From 1930 onward, he was allowed to teach a course on techniques of the arts. In 1940, no longer able to keep and to expand the collection by his own means, he decided to sell it. In 1941, the Art Historical Institute purchased the so-called “Technische Verzamelingen”. At the same time, Swillens hoped to be rewarded with a higher position, but the Curators of the University did not agree. In 2002, the “Swillenscollectie” was put on display in the museum of the University of Utrecht. As an art historian, and as a catholic as well, he was highly interested in the rich culture and artistic tradition of the mediaeval town of Utrecht. He published articles on a number of unknown Utrecht artists, including the sculptor Adriaen van Wesel (ca 1420-1499/1500). Swillens’ studies on Dutch seventeenth-century painting and architecture included a number of elaborate monographs on Pieter Janszoon Saenredam (1935), Johannes Vermeer (1950) and Jacob van Campen (1961). He also studied the 1718-1721 work of Arnold Houbraken (1660-1719): De Groote Schouburgh der Nederlantsche Konstschilders en Schilderessen (Great theatre of Netherlandish painters and paintresses). His useful three-volume transcription appeared between 1943 and 1953, completed with several indexes. Swillens stated more than once that the clearest sources to know an artist are documentary materials and facts, in addition to a technical and structural analysis of his works. Philosophical and historical reflections and aesthetical evaluations were in Swillens’ view not relevant. Some art historians, including Horst Gerson (in Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 5 (1936): 205-206) criticized this purely descriptive and objective approach. In 1955, Swillens retired from the Institute with a Farewell lecture: Kunstschepping en kunsttechniek, presenting his rather romantic and traditional ideas on the creative process. In his view, works of art where sublime revelations of lucid images from the soul of their creator. In 1958, Swillens won the “Zilveren Anjer”, granted by the Prins Bernhard-Fund. In 1961, the Utrecht Centraal Museum asked him to prepare an exhibition on Pieter Jansz. Saenredam. On this occasion Swillens republished a separate Catalogue raisonné of Saenredam’s works, together with I. Q. van Regteren Altena, in a Dutch and an English edition.

Selected Bibliography

[For the most important publications, see:] Koot, Roman in Hoogenboom, Annemieke and Gerards, Inemie (eds.) De Swillenscollectie. De kunsttechnische verzameling van het Kunsthistorisch Instituut te Utrecht. Vianen: Optima, 2002: pp. 74-80; “Een perspectivische studie over de schilderijen van Jan Vermeer van Delft” Oude Kunst 7 (1929): 129-161; “Johannes Vermeer van Delft, 31 oct. 1632 – 15 dec. 1675” Opgang 12 (1932): 689-699; Pieter Janszoon Saenredam, schilder van Haarlem, 1597-1665. Amsterdam: De Spieghel, 1935; Prentkunst in de Nederlanden tot 1800. Utrecht: Het Spectrum, 1944; Nederland in de prentkunst. (Heemschutserie 43) Amsterdam: De Lange, 1944 (Reprint: Utrecht: Hes Publishers, 1978); De Groote Schouburgh der Nederlantsche Konstschilders en Schilderessen door Arn. Houbraken. 3 vols. Maastricht: Leiter-Nypels, 1943-1953; “De Utrechtse beeldhouwer Adriaen van Wesel, ± 1420 – (na) 1489” Oud Holland 63 (1948): 149-164; Johannes Vermeer, Painter of Delft, 1632-1675. Utrecht: Het Spectrum, 1950; “De Utrechtse beeldhouwer Adriaen van Wesel. Enige aanvullende mededelingen” Oud Holland 66 (1951): 228-233; Kunstschepping en kunsttechniek.Voordracht gehouden ten afscheid van zijn ambtelijke loopbaan aan het Kunsthistorisch Instituut der Rijksuniversiteit te Utrecht op 3 mei 1955. Utrecht, 1955: Prisma schilderslexicon. Utrecht: Het Spectrum, 1957; Encyclopedie van de schilderkunst & aanverwante kunsten. (Prisma-boeken) Utrecht: Het Spectrum, 1960; Jacob van Campen, schilder en bouwmeester, 1595-1657. Assen: Van Gorcum, 1961 (Reprint: Arnhem: Gysbers & Van Loon, 1979); and Van Regteren Altena, J.Q. Catalogue raisonné van de werken van Pieter Jansz. Saenredam: uitgegeven ter gelegenheid van de Tentoonstelling Pieter Jansz. Saenredam, 15 September-3 December, 1961. Utrecht: Centraal Museum, 1961.

Sources

Utrechts Katholiek Dagblad, 2 april 1955; Hoogenboom, Annemieke and Gerards, Inemie (eds.) De Swillenscollectie. De kunsttechnische verzameling van het Kunsthistorisch Instituut te Utrecht. Vianen: Optima, 2002.

Contributors: Monique Daniels

Strong, Roy C.

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Strong, Roy C.

Gender: male

Date Born: unknown

Date Died: unknown

Home Country/ies: United Kingdom

Overview

Director of the (British) National Portrait Gallery and controversial director of the Victoria and Albert Museum, 1974-1987. Strong gained a first in history at Queen Mary College. He received a scholarship to research a doctorate on Elizabethan court pageantry. In 1959 he joined the National Portrait Gallery, London and by 1966 was appointed director. He married the theatre designer Julia Trevelyan Oman in 1971. Always a dandy and now armed with a pedigree for the fashion set, Strong embarked upon a mixture of snobbery and populism that marked his museum administration. One famous slogan was, “Martinis with the Bellinis.” In 1974, at age 38, he succeeded John Pope-Hennessy as director of the Victoria and Albert Museum in a controversial decision. The two men could not have been more different; both their subsequent memoirs made it a point to deprecate the other. Though Strong’s appointment was initially a popular with the V&A staff, Strong was aloof and irascible. He cancelled redevelopment plans for the Museum, a huge moral blow to the staff. Though he appointed new department heads, it was not overall enough to turn the museum around. The new Labour government insisted that the civil-service-run museum cut its staff by 25%. Rather than cut departments broadly, Strong gambled by closing the circulation department of the museum, which lent works to other institutions. Other cuts instituted by Strong included closing the Museum on Friday. In retaliation to another (Labour) government initiative, the wealth tax, Strong launched the exhibition “The Destruction of the English Country House 1875-1975,” a polemic against the government. In 1983 the new Henry Cole wing opened, and the Museum achieved the long-deserved independent status, removing it from the department of education and science, and giving it a board of trustees. Strong, however, argued with the trustees from the first. At a dwindling of attendance numbers, Strong introduced voluntary admission charges to the Museum in 1985, a controversial move. The Museum continued to lose money and now attendance as well and, many thought, losing sight of the populist mandate with which the Museum had been created. Though Strong irritated politicians, advisory councils and trustees, he understood the media. He perfected the blockbuster exhibition, “The Destruction of the Country House” and “The Garden” were huge successes. Strong created the Friends of the V&A [support group] and brought new external money in. Eventually, his disagreements with the board of trustees resulted in his resignation from the V&A in 1987. Strong was succeeded by Elizabeth Esteve-Coll, who further consolidated the Museum staff. His predecessor, Pope-Hennessy, described his tenure as “a 13-year regime that reduced the museum and its staff to a level from which it will not recover for many years.”

Sources

Hewison, Robert. “A Strong Case for Revenge.” The Times (London), May 4, 1997; Bayley, Stephen. “Vitrol & Ambition: It’s One of the World’s Great Museums [etc.].” The Independent (London), July 28, 2000, p. 1.

Strong, Sandford Arthur

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Strong, Sandford Arthur

Other Names:

Sandford A. Strong

Gender: male

Date Born: 1863

Date Died: 1904

Place Born: London, Greater London, England, UK

Place Died: London, Greater London, England, UK

Home Country/ies: United Kingdom

Subject Area(s): Arabic (style), British (modern), and catalogues raisonnés

Career(s): librarians

Overview

Librarian and Arabic scholar; helped identify and catalog masterworks in British collections. Strong was the son of Thomas Banks Strong, a War Office official, and Anna Lawson (Strong), a scholar of Hebrew. As a boy he studied drawing from Albert Varley, who gave him an edition of the Dictionary of Painters by Matthew Pilkington. Strong made a study of these artists, visiting to the National Gallery, London to supplement his interest. He attended St. Paul’s School in London, in 1877 but almost immediately left to become a clerk at Lloyd’s and attending classes at King’s College, London, before entering St. John’s College Cambridge, in1881 on a scholarship. At the suggestion of Edward Byles Cowell (1826-1903) he studied Sanskrit under Cecil Bendall (1856-1906). Strong graduated in 1884 in classics, but felt so ignored at Cambridge that he switched to Oxford in 1885 for intended graduate work. There he worked in the library of the Indian Institute. His contact with the Oxford scholars there led to him study in France and Germany under James Darmesteter (1849-1894) at Paris and Schrader at Berlin. Returning to London, he continued scholarly activity, reviewing for The Athenaeum and The Academy and creating an edition of the Maha-Bodhi-Vamsa for the Pali Text Society in 1891 and the Futah al-Habashah (or Conquest of Abyssinia) in 1894 for the Royal Asiatic Society’s monographs. A bid for the chair of Arabic at Cambridge failed, but in 1895 he was appointed professor of Arabic at University College, London. At the recommendation of Sidney Colvin, Strong took the position of librarian at Chatsworth to the duke of Devonshire, replacing Sir James Lacaita (1813-1895). Strong made several discoveries among the paintings collection at Chatsworth, the result of his boyhood study. In 1897 Strong married Eugénie Sellers Strong a distinguished archaeologist and art historian, and was appointed librarian at the House of Lords, a position he held concurrently with Chatsworth. His librarian duties included the cataloging of the general library and of the law books in printed editions. His successes led to an appointment of librarian to the duke of Portland at Welbeck Abbey, then the earl of Pembroke at Wilton, and finally Lord Wantage at Lockinge. He published analyses of these collections between 1900 and 1904. He assisted on the expanded second edition of History of Painting in Italy (1903 ff.) by Joseph Archer Crowe and G. B. Cavalcaselle. Strong suffered a chronic illness and died early in 1904. He is buried in Brompton cemetery. The Arthur Strong Oriental Library at University College, London, was named in his honor, built from volumes begun in his memory by his widow. Although the library was later dispersed to the university collection, a core of the titles formed the later library of the new School of Oriental Studies, founded in 1916. As an Italianist, Strong’s views were questioned by the Italian advisors to the Burlington Magazine, where Strong published. Roger Fry considered some of Strong’s attributions in the catalog of the Chatsworth old master drawing collection to be ridiculous and that the book’s review in the magazine was much gentler than it should have been because Strong controlled the plates (photographs) of the paintings needed to be published. Strong generally sided with R. Langton Douglas against Bernard Berenson in the quarrels, in part, according to Ernst Samuels, because of Strong’s wife’s affection for Berenson in the years before her marriage.

Selected Bibliography

[complete bibliography:] “Arthur Strong’s Original Contributions to Orientalism,” and “Articles by Arthur Strong not Reprinted in this Volume.” in, Strong, Sanford Arthur. Critical Studies and Fragments. London: Duckworth, 1905, pp. 348-50; edited 2nd edition, with Douglas, Langton, of Crowe, Joseph Archer, and Cavalcaselle, Giovanni. A History of Painting in Italy, Umbria, Florence and Siena, from the Second to the Sixteenth Century. 6 vols. London: J. Murray, 1903-1914; The Masterpieces in the Duke of Devonshire’s Collection of Pictures. London: F. Hanfstaengl, 1901; Futuh al-Habashah, or The Conquest of Abyssinia. London, 1894; edited Englsih edition, Kristeller, Paul. Andrea Mantegna. London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1901; and Redford, George, and Temple, Alfred George. Catalogue of Pictures Forming the Collection of Lord and Lady Wantage at 2 Carlton Gardens, London, Lockinge House, Berks, and Overstone Park and Ardington House. London: F. Wetherman, 1902.

Sources

Lord Balcarres. “Memoir.” in Strong, Sanford Arthur. Critical Studies and Fragments. London: Duckworth, 1905, pp. 1-25; Leahy, Helen Rees. “The Burlington Magazine, 1903-1911.” in, Mansfield, Elizabeth, ed. Art History and its Institutions: Foundations of a Discipline. New York: Routledge, 2002, pp. 232-233; Cotton, J. S., and Katz, J. B. “Strong, Sandford Arthur (1863-1904).” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography 2004; [obituary:] Times (London) January 19, 1904; Lowndes, M. E. “A Distinguished Librarian.” (June 1905); Samuels, Ernest and Samuels, Jayne Newcomer. Bernard Berenson: the Making of a Legend. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1987, p. 145.

Contributors: Lee Sorensen

Stroud, Dorothy

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Stroud, Dorothy

Other Names:

Dorothy Nancy Stroud

Gender: female

Date Born: 1910

Date Died: 1997

Place Born: London, Greater London, England, UK

Place Died: London, Greater London, England, UK

Home Country/ies: United Kingdom

Subject Area(s): architecture (object genre), gardens (open spaces), landscape architecture (discipline), landscapes (representations), and sculpture (visual works)

Overview

Garden and landscape architecture historian; assistant at the Sir John Soane Museum under John Newenham Summerson. Stroud’s father abandoned her mother when Stroud was two years old. Though Stroud received an solid grade school education in Eastbourne and then in Edgbaston, Birmingham, though she could not afford college. She trained as a typist and joined the staff of Country Life magazine in 1930 initially in the book department, but soon transferring to the editorial department. Country Life’s editor, Christopher Hussey, encouraged a native interest in landscape architecture. She collected material on “Capability” Brown for publication.

Through Hussey, Stroud also met the architectural historian John Newenham Summerson, a contributor to the magazine. Summerson joined the National Buildings Record in 1941, an initiative to document the buildings in London before the blitz destroyed them. When Summerson was appointed curator of Sir John Soane’s Museum in Lincoln’s Inn Fields in 1945, he hired Stroud as “inspectress,” a position created in the original charter of the museum. Stroud saw to the day-to-day operation of the Museum while its formal head, Summerson, went on various scholarly and lecture forays. The two worked to raise the profile of the museum to an international reputation. Stroud’s lack of formal education perhaps appealed to Summerson, who was also self-trained in architectural history.

In 1950 she published a book on Brown, whose own account-book she discovered in the course of her research, as well as a biography of Henry Holland. A book on Soane’s architecture appeared in 1961. In 1962 she issued a biography of a landscape gardener, Humphrey Repton. A book on George Dance was published in 1971. She served on the Historic Buildings Council between 1974 and 1982. She retired in 1984 and was succeeded by Margaret Richardson. Her book on John Soane, a monograph Summerson himself was never able to write, appeared in 1986. It was her last. Failing memory in her final years prevented her from being celebrated as one of the pioneers of the history of landscape architecture. She was vice-president of the Garden History Society from 1982 until her death.

Stroud’s accomplishments are all the more significant when framed in the backdrop of private women scholars in the first half of the 20th century. Unmarried and uneducated formally, her research was possible only after she completed a full-day’s job managing a museum. Her tenacity was only hampered by her gender: her search of Capability Brown’s plan for Blenheim Palace’s park was thwarted because it hung in the men’s lavatory. She also sewed the curtains in the museum and scrubbed the sarcophagus.

Selected Bibliography

The Architecture of Sir John Soane. London: Studio, 1961; Capability Brown. London: Country Life, 1950; George Dance, Architect, 1741-1825. London: Faber and Faber Ltd., 1971; Henry Holland, 1745-1806. London: Art and Technics, 1950; Sir John Soane, Architect. London: Faber & Faber, 1984.

Sources

[obituraries:] Colvin, Howard. “Dorothy Stroud: Keeper of the Treasure.” Guardian (London) January 26, 1998, p. 13; “Dorothy Stroud.” The Times (London) January 22, 1998; Cornforth, John. “Dorothy Stroud.” The Independent (London), January 1, 1998, p. 14.

Strzygowski, Josef Rudolf Thomas

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Strzygowski, Josef Rudolf Thomas

Other Names:

Josef Strzygowski

Gender: male

Place Born: Bielsko-Biala, Silesian Voivodeship, Poland

Place Died: Vienna, Vienna state, Austria

Home Country/ies: Austria

Subject Area(s): European, Late Antique, and Medieval (European)

Overview

Professor in Graz and later at Vienna (from 1909); major exponent of the concept that western European late antique and medieval arts owed much to the influences of the east. He was born in Bielitz, Silesia, Austria which is present-day Bielsko-Biala, Poland. Strzygowski’s father was a clothing manufacturer. His mother, Edle Trass von Friedelfeldt was from minor nobility. He was raised in Biala, Austrian Silesia, predominently Polish in its makeup. Strzygowski attended the Gymnasium in Jena and then a Realschule in Brunn. After graduation at age 18 he entered his father’s weaving factory. After two years, he left to return to study in Vienna under Rudolf Eitelberger von Edelberg and Moriz Thausing, then with Herman Grimm in Berlin, before writing a dissertation in Munich in 1885 under Enrico Brunn and the Halle classicist Carl Robert. His dissertation topic was on images of the baptism of Christ, drawn from eastern sources. He wrote his Habilitationschrft in Vienna in 1887 and at 25, began lecturng there. After study trip supplied by the DAI to Rome and subsequently Greece, Russia and France, Strzygowski accepted the first chair (professorship) of art history at the University of Graz in 1892. His early publications on Byzantine and Roman art were severely criticized by the Vienna School art historians Aloïs Riegl and Franz Wickhoff as being poorly researched and thought out. Personal and methodological enmity between Strzygowski and the scholars of Vienna developed which lasted their lifetimes.

Strzygowski spent the years 1894-1895 in Egypt. In 1901, he published a groundbreaking theoretical study, Orient oder Rom, arguing that early medieval architecture owed much of its influence to the oriental middle east. This effectively questioned the cannon of art history predominant at the time, that Christian art was a direct outgrowth of the styles of Greece and Rome. Strzygowski developed an elaborate “Nordic myth” explanation for art, contending that non-objective ornament was a northern-European tendency, whereas illusionistic verisimilitude was a “southern” trait. He championed the work of contemporary artist Arnold Böcklin as a re-emerging of the Nordic style. Strzygowski was voted to succeed the chair held by his adversary, Wickhoff at Wickhoff’s death in 1909 to the University of Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Institut–a decision determined by only one vote and perhaps pushed by the Archduke Ferdinand. The Institut selected the other holder of the chair be the more conventional art scholarly, Max Dvořák. This sealed a rivalry between Strzygowski and Dvořák (and his student and successor, Julius Alwin von Schlosser). Strzygowski’s work attracted the notice of Princeton art department chair Allen Marquand in a 1910 article. His plans for a research Institute to study the arts of the Middle East, Southeast Europe and Asia, with offices in Tehran and Beijing, foundered in1912 because of financing. In 1913, Strzygowski and a group of colleagues mapped Armenian monuments. The result was the 1918 book Die Baukunst der Armenien und Europa Ergebnisse the first architectural history of Armenia.

Divisions at the Institut worsened with Dvořák’s untimely death in 1921. Dvořák’s student, Schlosser, assumed his chair, proving more agressive in his personal and methodological opposition to Strzygowski than his mentor had been. Strzygowski, claiming he held the longer chair to the Institut split the instituion in half with his as the first, Erstes Kunsthistorisches Institut or Wiener Institut, and Schlosser’s as the second. Strzygowski’s Institute was a center where scholars from various countries and disciplines could study and teach. The popularity of his institute further angered the Vienna-School scholars. Strzygowski lectured widely; at Havard and Bryn Mawr in the United States in 1922 and in Europe. His lectures delivered for the Olaus-Petri foundation in Upsala appeared as Origin of Christian Church Art, 1923, and lectures at the University of London as Early Church art in Northern Europe, 1928. After the death of his first wife, he married a painter, Herta Karasek. When he retired in 1933, his institute was dissolved. In the final years, Strzygowski embraced the Nazi sentiments of racism and nationalism, although these appeared to be more the logical conclusion of his earlier theories than any attempt to court the political authorities. His most famous pupils, Otto Demus, Ernst Diez, and Fritz Novotny were able to employ his methodology without its political ramifications. Even pupils of his Vienna School rivals, such as Hans Sedlmayr (Schlosser’s student) adopted the structural analysis and methodological analogies of Strzygowski’s best work (Lachnit).

Strzygowski sought the origins of early Christian iconography in the Hellenistic cities of its origins. He approached works by determining their parent forms. His work was characterized by the study of origins of constructive processes in architecture (i.e. the vault and the cupola), stylistic representations of animals in northern art, and the origins of Viking ship building in native wood construction of Central Europe. Strzygowski’s methodological vision was one of uniting two strands of observation which he termed “factual research” and “viewer-research.” His essays ranged from the art of Armenia, Ravenna and the Middle East, as well as on aspects of northern European art. His work encouraged Wladimir Sas-Zaloziecky in Graz and Demus in Vienna to study the history of Byzantine art and Dagobert Frey, then teaching in Wrocław, and Heinrich Gerhard Franz in Graz for the areas of East Asia. The architectural historian David Watkin wrote of Kleinasien, ein Neuland der Kunstgeschichte sixty-seven years later that is it “rich, stimulating, and written from the heart about the things he loved best..

Selected Bibliography

[partial bibliography:] Karasek, Alfred. Verzeichnis der Schriften von Josef Strzygowski. Klagenfur: A. Kollitsch, 1933; Orient oder Rom? Beiträge zur geschichte der Späantiken und frühchristlichen Kunst. Leipzig: J.C. Hinrichs, 1900; Hellas in des Orients Umarmung. Munich: Ullgemeinen Zeitung, 1902; Kleinasien: ein Neuland der Kunstgeschichte. Leipzig: J.C. Hinrichs, 1903; and Schulz, Bruno. “Mschatta, I: Bericht über die Aufnahme der Ruine.” and “II: Kunstwissenschaftliche Untersuchung.” Jahrbuch der preuszischen Kunstsammlungen 25 (1904): 205-373; and Berchem, Max van, and Bell, Gertrude Lowthian. Amida: Matériaux pour l’épigraphie et l’histoire musulmanes du Diyar-bekr. Heidelberg: C. Winter, 1910; Altai-Iran und Völkerwanderung: ziergeschichtliche Untersuchungen über den Eintritt der Wander- und Nordvölker in die Treibhäuser geistigen Lebens, anknüpfend an einen Schatzfund in Albanien. Leipzig: J.C. Hinrich, 1917; Die Baukunst der Armenien und Europa Ergebnisse einer vom Kunsthistorischen Institute der Universität Wien 1913 durchgeführten Forschungsreise. Vienna: A. Schroll & Co., 1918; Ursprung der christlichen Kirchenkunst: neue Tatsachen und Grundsätze der Kunstforschung: 8 Vorträge der Olaus Petri-Stiftung in Upsala. Leipzig: Hinrichs 1920; Die Krisis der Geisteswissenschaften: Vorgeführt am Beispiel der Forschung über bildende Kunst; Ein grundsätzlicher Rahmenversuch. Vienna: A. Schroll, 1923 [a Proto- Nazi work, Kleinbauer, Modern Perspectives, 23]; Origin of Christian Church Art: New Facts and Principles of Research. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1923; “Grundsatzliches und Tatsachliches.” Die Kunstwissenschaft der Gegenwart, in Selbstdarstellungen. Edited by Johannes Jahn. Leipzig: 1924: 157-81; Early Church Art in Northern Europe with Special Reference to Timber Construction and Decoration. London: B.T. Batsford, 1928; Asiens bildende Kunst in Stichproben, ihr Wesen und ihre Entwicklung, ein Versuch. Augsburg: Dr. B. Filser, 1930; Aufgang des Nordens, Lebenskampf eines Kunstforschers um ein deutsches Weltbild. Leipzig: Schwarzhäupter-Verlag, 1936.

Sources

Marquand, Allan. “Strzygowski and his Theory of Early Christian Art.” Harvard Theological Review (July 1910): 357-365; Kleinbauer, W. Eugene. Modern Perspectives in Western Art History: An Anthology of 20th-Century Writings on the Visual Arts. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971, p. 23; Watkin, David. The Rise of Architectural History. London: Architectural Press, 1980, p. 91; Bazin, Germain. Histoire de l’histoire de l’art; de Vasari à nos jours. Paris: Albin Michel, 1986, pp. 155, 165-171; Marchand, Suzanne. “The Rhetoric of Artifacts and the Decline of Classical Humanism: The Case of Josef Strzygowski.” in Grafton, Anthony, and Marchand, Suzanne L., eds., Proof and Persuasion in History. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1994, pp 117; Wharton, Annabel. “The Scholarly Frame: Orientalism and the Construction of Late Ancient Art History.” chapter 1 of Refiguring the Post Classical City. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995, pp. 1-14; Edwin Lachnit, “Josef Strzygowski.” The Dictionary of Art 29: 795-6; Maranci, Christina. Medieval Armenian Architecture in Historiography: Josef Strzygowski and his Legacy. Dissertation, Princeton University, 1998, pp. 89-99; Metzler Kunsthistoriker Lexikon: zweihundert Porträts deutschsprachiger Autoren aus vier Jahrhunderten. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1999, pp. 400-403; Maranci, Christina. Medieval Armenian Architecture: Constructions of Race and Nation. Sterling, VA: Peeters, 2000; Olin, Margaret. “Art History and Ideology: Alois Riegl and Josef Strzygowski.” in Gold, Penny Schein, and Sax, Benjamin C., eds. Cultural Visions: Essays on the History of Culture. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2000, pp. 151-172; Elsner, Jaś. “The Birth of Late Antiquity: Riegl and Strzygowski in 1901.” Art History 25 no. 3 (2002): 358-79; [obituary:] Diez, Ernst. “Josef Strzygowski, Biographisches.” Felsefi Arkivi (Istanbul) 2 no. 1 (1947): 13-25; Zäh, Alexander. “Strzygowski, Josef, Kunsthistoriker.” Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon XLI (2020) pp.1239-1246. STRZYGOWSKI, Josef, Kunsthistoriker,

Contributors: Lee Sorensen

Stuart, James

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Stuart, James

Other Names:

James "Athenian" Stuart

Gender: male

Date Born: 1713

Date Died: 1788

Place Born: London, Greater London, England, UK

Place Died: London, Greater London, England, UK

Home Country/ies: United Kingdom

Subject Area(s): Ancient Greek (culture or style), architecture (object genre), and sculpture (visual works)

Overview

Architect; first to write an accurate book on Greek architecture. Stuart was born to a Scottish seaman’s family in London. After his father’s death, he was apprenticed to the fan painter Louis Goupy (1700-1747). Following his mother’s death, Stuart traveled Rome in 1742 to study art. He learned engraving and conducted English tourists around the city for income. In 1748, he, the architect Nicholas Revett (1720-1804) and the painter/art dealer Gavin Hamilton (1723-1798) developed a plan to measure and publish detailed drawings of the extant architecture in Greece. The scheme was largely driven by the lure of financial gain. However, publications on historic architecture, such as the popular Entwurff einer historischen Architektur by the architect Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach (published in Vienna in 1721 and appearing in an English translation in 1730) seemed to assure success. Stuart gained some income drawing and publishing a Roman obelisk which he contributed to De obelisco Caesaris of Angelo Maria Bandini (1726-1803), published in 1750. He studied Greek and Latin at the Collegio di Propaganda Fide. He also gained practical advice from the antiquaries James Dawkins (1722-1757) and Robert Wood (1717?-1771), based in Rome. An Englishman living in Venice, Sir James Gray, second baronet (c.1708-1773), introduced the men to the Society of Dilettanti, the British group of wealthy amateur scholars leading the vogue of interest in the antique. The Society hoped that a detailed analysis of Greek monuments would aid further study. Hamilton abandoned the project, but Revett and Stuart left Italy for Greece in 1751, the former making detailed measurements and drawings of Greek architecture and the latter the notes. When they returned to England in 1755, Stuart was hired by individual Society of Dilettanti members to modify their houses and parks in Greek style. Stuart’s personal familiarity with the monuments and his association the with Society of Dilettanti posed a professional rivalry with two other neo-classical architects, Robert Adam and William Chambers. Adam publicly criticized Stuart, which resulted in the loss of a commission to design the home of the collector Nathaniel Curzon (1727-1804). Stuart’s casual business practice and mounting alcohol addiction were also a liability. Curzon, however, retained Stuart to make designs for the interior in 1757; Stuart’s colored drawings for the commission are among the earliest of completely-furnish neoclassical interiors (Watkin). The project for Antiquities of Athens had grown to four projected volumes and the subscribers number well over 300. Stuart continued to delay publishing, marrying his housekeeper around this time. In the meantime, the French architect Julien-David Le Roy issued his Les Ruines des plus beaux monuments de la Grčce in 1758, a smaller and much less accurate book of the same kind. Publication of Antiquities of Athens dragged on, Stuart insisting that he take Le Roy to task in the pages of his new book. Revett sold his interest to Stuart. Stuart was engaged in another commission, this from George Lyttelton, Baron Lyttelton (1709-73) for the Temple of Theseus, 1758, Hagley Park, Worcestershire. The project was the first to use fluted, baseless Greek Doric order. It became the model for that order of Greek revival architecture throughout Europe and America. The first volume of Antiquities of Athens finally appeared, with text by Stuart, in 1762, covering only a small portion of what their proposal to the Society had suggested. Somewhat ironically, the volume focused on on minor Hellenistic buildings and omitted, some major 5th-century buildings of Athens. The book’s major influence was not so much architectural scholarship, but to designers who took Stuart and Revett’s drawing of ornament for their own designs. The Greek revival in the decorative arts in England was largely due to Antiquities of Athens. Other architectural commissions included Greek designs for Thomas Anson at Shugborough, Staffordshire, in 1765 (the famous Tower of the Winds among other works) and the interiors for John, 1st Earl Spencer, at Spencer House, St. James’s Place, including furniture (London, V&A, on loan to Spencer House) in the 1760s. Private monumental marble commissions from this time include funerary monuments such as the 1766 tomb of Philip Yorke, 1st Earl of Hardwicke and his wife in Wimpole church, Cambs. In 1771, Stuart wrote Critical Observations on the Buildings and Improvements of London an architectural and art assessment of the city. A London house for Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu (1720-1800) built at 22 Portman Square was begun in 1775 (today demolished). Stuart was appointed Surveyor to the Greenwich Hospital, charged with rebuilding the interior of the chapel in 1780 after a fire. Stuart married a second time the same year, to the sixteen-year-old Elizabeth Blacland (1764-1798) with whom he fathered five children. His drinking increased and his health declined. He died at his home in London without completing the second volume of the Antiquities, which appeared with the assistance of William Newton (1735-1790). Volume three appeared in 1795. The publisher Josiah Taylor acquired Stuart’s papers and issued a fourth volume in 1816. A final supplement to the series was issued in 1830. Stuart, who in his lifetime was called “Athenian,” wrote the first accurate record of Classical Greek architecture. The Antiquities of Athens was second only to the work of Johann Joachim Winckelmann in promoting the primacy of the Greek artistic ideal in eighteenth-century Europe. His accurate drawings and topographical views became basis for the Greek Revival architecture of Europe and North America in the early 19th century.

Selected Bibliography

contributed, Bandini, Angelo Maria. De obelisco Caesaris Augusti e Campi Martii ruderibus nuper eruto commentarius auctore Angelo Maria Bandinic accedunt cll. virorum epistolae atque opuscula. Rome: Excudebant N. & M. Palearini, 1750; and Revett, Nicholas. Antiquities of Athens. 4 vols. London: printed by J. Haberkorn, 1762-1816, vol. 5, supplement, 1830; Critical Observations on the Buildings and Improvements of London. London: Printed by J. Dodsley, 1771.

Sources

Arbuthnott, Catherine. “The Life of James ‘Athenian’ Stuart, 1713-1788.” in, Soros, Susan Weber, ed. James “Athenian” Stuart, 1713-1788: The Rediscovery of Antiquity. New York: Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design and Culture/Yale University Press, 2006, pp. 59-101; [Lawrence] Lewis, Lesley. “Stuart and Revett: Their Literary and Archaeological Careers.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 2 (1938-9): 128-145; Landy, Jacob. “Stuart and Revett: Pioneer Archaeologists.” Archaeology 9 (1956): 252-259; Watkin, David. Athenian Stuart: Pioneer of the Greek Revival. London: Allen and Unwin, 1982; Harris, Eileen. British Architectural Books and Writers 1556-1785. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990, pp. 439-450; Soros, Susan Weber, ed. James “Athenian” Stuart, 1713-1788: the Rediscovery of Antiquity. New Haven: Bard Graduate Center for Studies/Yale University Press, 2006; Wiebenson, Dora. Sources of Greek Revival Architecture. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1969.

Stubblebine, James H.

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Stubblebine, James H.

Other Names:

James Stubblebine

Gender: male

Date Born: 28 December 1920

Date Died: 03 February 1987

Place Born: New York, NY, USA

Place Died: New York, NY, USA

Home Country/ies: United States

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

Career(s): educators

Overview

Rutgers University professor of art history and early Italian Renaissance-era scholar and Giotto specialist. Stubblebine’s parents were Albert Day Stubblebine and Ruth Harvey (Stubblebine). He attended Harvard University, graduating in 1942. World War II declared, he joined U.S. Navy, serving 1943-1946 and rising to the rank of lieutenant. After discharge he entered New York University as a graduate student, studying under Richard Offner. Having secured a Fulbright fellowship, 1953-1954, he completed his Ph.D. in 1954 with a dissertation on Guido da Siena. Other scholars who assisted his research included Rensselaer W. Lee and Millard Meiss. He taught as an instructor at Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA before his appointment at New Jersey’s state university, Rutgers, in 1957. Stubblebine headed the department of art between 1961 and 1969. As chair, he strengthen undergraduate studies and was a founding member of the graduate program in art history at Rutgers. Stubblebine issued a revised version of his dissertation by Princeton University Press as Guido da Siena in 1964. He taught as a visiting lecturer at University of Pennsylvania for the academic year1965-1966. He received a Kress fellowship for the1969-1970 year. He published collected essays by scholars with his own introduction in the ‘Norton Critical Studies in Art History’ series as Giotto: the Arena Chapel Frescoes. Stubblebine was a National Endowment for the Humanities fellow, 1975-1976. In 1977 he was appointed Distinguished Professor II at Rutgers, the University’s highest rank. He published the catalogue raissone on Duccio, Duccio di Buoninsegna and his School in 1979. His annotated bibliography, Dugento Painting, was intended to launch a larger project on that topic. However, Stubblebine suffered a sudden heart attack at age 66 and died in a Manhattan hosptial. Stubblebine’s Duccio di Buoninsegna and his School is seen has his major contribution to the discipline. His final work, Assisi and the Rise of Vernacular asserted controversially that the St. Francis cycle in the Arena Chapel is a later work, not by Giotto but a follower.

Selected Bibliography

[dissertation:] An Altarpiece by Guido da Siena and his Narrative Style. New York University, 1958, revised and published as Guido da Siena. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1964;
Giotto: the Arena Chapel Frescoes. Norton critical studies in art history. New York: Norton, 1969;
Duccio di Buoninsegna and his School. 2 vols. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979; Dugento Painting: an Annotated Bibliography. Boston: G.K. Hall, 1983;
Assisi and the Rise of Vernacular Art. Cambridge, MA: Harper & Row, 1985.

Sources

[obituaries:] “James Stubblebine.” New York Times February 5, 1987, p. B6; McHam, Sarah Blake. “James Stubblebine.” Burlington Magazine 129 (December 1987): 808;
Stubblebine, James. “Preface and Acknowledgement.” Guido da Siena. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1964, pp. vii-viii;

Studniczka, Franz

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Studniczka, Franz

Other Names:

Franz Studniczka

Gender: male

Date Born: 14 August 1860

Date Died: 04 December 1929

Place Born: Poland

Place Died: Leipzig, Saxony, Germany

Home Country/ies: Austria

Subject Area(s): Antique, the, Classical, and Roman (ancient Italian culture or period)

Overview

Specialist in classical Roman and Greek art; Professor of Archaeology at the University of Leipzig 1896-1929. He was born in Jaslo, Galicia, which is present day Poland. Studniczka attended the University in Vienna studying classical archaeology under Otto Benndorf. He wrote his habiliation in 1887 also at Vienna and was appointed professor at the University of Freiburg, 1889. In 1896 he moved to University of Leipzig as professor of classical archaeology, succeeding Johannes Overbeck. As an educator he expanded the collection of casts of antique sculptures at the Leipizig Classical Museum, which became one of the largest collections of casts in Germany. In the 1920s he taught sculpture cleaning and photographing techniques to the Smith College professor Clarence Kennedy who was to become one of the important art photographers of the age. Studniczka’s scholarship resulted in a greatly-admired restoration of the fragment sculpture of the Artemis-Iphigenia Group (Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek). He was succeeded in 1932 by Bernhard Schweitzer.

Selected Bibliography

Identifizierung des Aristoteles-Porträts, 1900.

Sources

Archäologenbildnisse: Porträts und Kurzbiographien von Klassichen Archäologen deutscher Sprache. Reinhard Lullies, ed. Mainz am Rhein: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 1988: 138-139; Hartswick, Kim J. The Gardens of Sallust: a Changing Landscape. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2004, pp. 85-88ff.

Stuers, Victor Eugène Louis de, Jonkheer

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Stuers, Victor Eugène Louis de, Jonkheer

Other Names:

Jonkheer Victor de Stuers

Gender: male

Date Born: 1843

Date Died: 1916

Place Born: Maastricht, Limburg, Netherlands

Place Died: The Hague, South Holland, Netherlands

Home Country/ies: Netherlands

Subject Area(s): Dutch (culture or style), Netherlandish, Northern Renaissance, and painting (visual works)

Overview

Influential head of the Arts and Sciences Department of the Netherlands and historian of Dutch art, consolidator of art museums in the Netherlands. Stuers wrote an inventory catalog of the art in the Maurtishuis in the Hague in 1874. When the first Dutch department dealing with conservation was established in 1875, de Stuers assumed responsibility for the Arts and Sciences Department within the Ministry of Home Affairs, in addition to being secretary of various influential committees which provided the state with advice on proposed restorations. De Stuers made the first systematic survey of pre-1850 historic buildings in the Netherlands. In 1881 he and the art collector A. A. des Tombe discovered the now famous “Girl with the Pearl Earring” by Vermeer at a Hague auction house, then ascribed as an unknown master. De Stuers agreed not to bid against Des Tombe, who acquired the picture, but obviously with a certain obligation to de Stuers. De Stuers oversaw the consolidation of paintings in the Netherland into the new Rijksmuseum building, elevating Rijksmuseum van Schilderijen (National Museum of Paintings) director Frederik D. O. Obreen to the position in 1885. Obreen and de Stuers played an important role in the relocation and rearrangement of the collections of the Rijksmuseum. Both Obreen and De Stuers had rather conservative views on the display of the works of art, however, preferring to show as many paintings as possible floor to ceiling, even when other museums such as the National Museum in Berlin under Wilhelm Bode were grouping paintings by school and selectively. The design of the new Rijksmuseum caused an controversy; a very public quarrel with Nicolaas de Roever and de Stuers over the final form for the building of the Rijksmuseum ensued. De Stuers retired from government service in 1901. When des Tombes died in 1902, a secret will bequeathed “The Girl with the Pearl Earring” to the Mauritshuis along with twelve other paintings. De Stuer’s Arts and Sciences Department was replaced by the National Committee for the Protection of Monuments in 1903.

Selected Bibliography

Notice historique et descriptive des tableaux et des sculptures exposés dans le Musée royal de La Haye. La Haye: M. Nijhoff, 1874; Beknopte beschrijving van de kunstvoorwerpen tentoongesteld in het Koninklijk Kabinet van Schilderijen te ‘s-Gravenhage. ‘s-Gravenhage: Nijhoff, 1877; Het Rijks-museum te Amsterdam. Amsterdam: Van Holkema & Warendorf, 1890; Mr. N. de Roever en de minister Heemskerk. ‘s-Gravenhage: W.P. van Stockum, 1892.

Sources

Tutein Nolthenius, R. P. J. Het levenswerk van Jhr. Mr. Victor de Stuers: herdacht door zijne vrienden. Utrecht: Oosthoek, 1913; Harms Tiepen, C. Jhr. Victor de Stuers: adviseur voor de monumenten van geschiedenis en kunst (een interview). Amsterdam: Harms Tiepen, 1913; Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart. vol. 32. Leipzig: W. Engelmann, 1938, p. 242; Biografisch woordenboek van Nederland. vol. 1. ‘s-Gravenhage: Nijhoff, 1979, p. 566; Bervoets, J. A. A., and Wishaupt, M. C. M., and Dongen, J. van. Victor de Stuers, referendaris zonder vrees of blaam: catalogus bij de tentoonstelling in de Koninklijke Bibliotheek en het Algemeen Rijksarchief. s-Gravenhage: Koninklijke Bibliotheek, 1985

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