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Tolnay, Charles de

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Tolnay, Charles de

Other Names:

Karoly Vagujhely Tolnai (Hungarian)

Gender: male

Date Born: 27 May 1899

Date Died: 17 January 1981

Place Born: Budapest, Czechoslovakia

Place Died: Florence, Tuscany, Italy

Home Country/ies: Germany

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

Overview

Michelangelo scholar and Columbia University professor. Tolnay was the son of Arnold von Tolnai, an high-ranking official of the Hungarian administration of the Austro-Hungarian government. He graduated from the Staatsovergymnasium in Budapest, where he was raised, in 1918. Tolnay was a participant in the famous Budapest Sonntagskreis (Sunday Circle) whose members included intellectuals such as the philosopher György Lukács (1885-1971) and art historians Arnold Hauser, Frederick Antal, and Johannes Wilde. Beginning in 1918, Tolnay studied art history and archaeology in Berlin (under Adolph Goldschmidt), in Frankfurt (under Rudolf Kautzsch) and Vienna, completing his dissertation in 1925 under the pre-eminent Vienna-School scholar Julius Alwin von Schlosser. His dissertation topic was on Hieronymous Bosch. Methodologically, however, Tolnay was as much influenced by Max Dvořák, another of the Vienna scholars. He moved to Rome, researching the topic that would become his life’s major focus, Michelangelo. In 1928 he became a privatdozent associated with the University of Hamburg, coming into contact with the young Erwin Panofsky and writing his habilitation in 1929 on Michelangelo’s late architecture. He married Rina Ada Clara Bartolucci in 1930. He received research grants from the Bibliotheca Hertziana for additional study in Rome. Tolnay objected to the Nazi’s policies and, although not Jewish himself, he, along with many Jewish art historians, emigrated from Germany. He fled to Paris in 1933 where he worked as the Chargé de Conférences at the Institut d’art et d’archéologie of the Sorbonne. Tolnay’s 1939 book on the Master of Flémalle, written in French during this period, established the now accepted notion that this artist is the same as the artist Robert Campin and likely the artist Jacques Daret. With Panofsky’s written recommendation on his behalf, he immigrated to the United States in 1939, working at a member of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, N. J., until 1948. During this time he issued the first of what would become his five-volume analysis on the work of Michelangelo, The Youth of Michelangelo. He become a U.S. citizen as well. After a Guggenheim Fellowship for 1948-1949, he was named a Bollingen Fellow from 1949 until 1953. In 1953 Tolnay was appointed professor at Columbia University. He completed his Michelangelo series in 1960. Tolnay retired from Columbia in 1965 to become Director of the Casa Buonarotti in Florence. As director, he presided over the museum’s rescue and restoration of the artworks damaged during the disastrous 1966 flood of the Arno river. He also reorganized the object numbering system and mounted several high-profile exhibitions. Tolnay married second time, to Anna-Marie Reps, a writer and painter, in 1971. During the final years of his life, he began issuing a corpus of Michelangelo drawings, Corpus dei disegni di Michelangelo, the first volume of which appeared in 1975. He died at age 82 in Florence. In 1934, Panofsky wrote that Tolnay was “one of the most brilliant art historians” of their time (Wendland). As a connoisseur, Tolnay’s attributions convinced the great Berlin scholar Max J. Friedländer that some of Friedländer’s own attributions had been wrong. As a modernist, Tolnay he followed the theory of Fülep (whom he acknowledged) in an essay on Cézanne Tolnay published in Hungarian in 1924, arguing that Cézanne’s importance was his technique of representing the fragmented world of modernity through his brushstrokes, “which embodies the essence of form.” (Lackó). Tolnay was able to combine two disparate methodologies of his mentors, Goldschmidt and Dvořák, into a cohesive approach, respecting both the object and a theoretical framework on which to place it (Salvini). His major work on Michelangelo was eminently readable, but suffered, according to some, from Tolnay’s lack of contact with the original sources. His legacy was continued by the work of James S. Ackerman (Lein).

Selected Bibliography

[habilitation:] Die späten architektonischen Projekte Michelangelos. Hamburg, 1929; Pierre Bruegel l’ancien. 2 vols. Brussels: Nouvelle société d’éditions, 1935; Hieronymus Bosch. Basle: Les Éditions Holbein, 1937; Le Maître de Flémalle et les freres Van Eyck. Brussels: Éditions de La Connaissance, s.a., 1939; Michelangelo. 5 vols. Princeton: Princeton University Press, specifically, The Youth of Michelangelo, 1943 (vol. 1), The Sistine Ceiling, 1945 (vol. 2), The Medici Chapel, 1948 (vol. 3), The Tomb of Julius II, 1954 (vol. 4), The Final Period: Last Judgment, Frescoes of the Pauline Chapel, Last Pietas, 1960 (vol. 5); Corpus dei disegni di Michelangelo. Novara: Istituto geografico De Agostini, 1975ff.

Sources

Kleinbauer, W. Eugene. Modern Perspectives in Western Art History: An Anthology of 20th-Century Writings on the Visual Arts. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971, p. 70 cited, 102; 435-436; Tolnay, Charles de. “Erinnerung an Gustav Pauli und an meine Hamburger Jahre.” Jahrbuch der Hamburger Kunstsammlungen 19 (1974): 10-12; 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. 159; Salvini, Roberto. “Il metodo critico di Charles de Tolnay.” Charles de Tolnay. Giornata commemorativa [special issue]. Accademia nazionale dei Lincei. 381 (1984): 1-31; Wendland, Ulrike. Biographisches Handbuch deutschsprachiger Kunsthistoriker im Exil: Leben und Werk der unter dem Nationalsozialismus verfolgten und vertriebenen Wissenschaftler. Munich: Saur, 1999, vol. 2, pp. 703-713; Lackó, Miklós. “The Truths of the Soul: From the Correspondence between Lajos Fülep, Charles de Tolnay and Karl Keényi.” Hungarian Quarterly 40, no. 156 (Winter 1999): ; Lein, Edgar. “James S[loss] Ackerman: The Architecture of Michelangelo.” Naredi-Rainer, Paul von. Hauptwerke der Kunstgeschichtsschreibung. Stuttgart: Alfred Kröner, 2010, p.1; [obituaries:] “Charles de Tolnay.” Times (London) January 22, 1981, p. 16; Brion-Guerry, L. Gazette des Beaux-Arts 6 no. 97 (April 1981): supplement, 32.

Contributors: Lee Sorensen

Tonks, Oliver Samuel

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Tonks, Oliver Samuel

Gender: male

Date Born: c. 1873-1874

Date Died: 1953

Place Died: Poughkeepsie, Dutchess, NY, USA

Home Country/ies: United States

Career(s): educators

Overview

Head of the Art Department, Vassar College. Tonks graduated from Princeton University undergraduate and received his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1903. His thesis topic was on the Greek vase painter Brygos. In 1905 he accepted a position by Allan Marquand at the College of New Jersey (now Princeton) to assist as preceptor in the senior Greek sculpture class. When Tonks was hired at Vassar in 1911, he had been the sole appointment of the Department of Art. He remained at Vassar 33 years. Among his accomplishments were the modernization of the teaching of art history, a standardization of the major, and the introduction of lectures and study material. The preceptorial system he introduced remains the foundation of Art 105/106 courses at Vassar. He also reinstated studio art classes and created a professor of “History and Criticism.” In 1927 he issued a survey of Italian art. Tonks retired in 1944, and was succeeded by Agnes Rindge Claflin.

Selected Bibliography

[dissertation:] Brygos. Harvard University, 1903, published, “Brygos, His Characteristics” Memoirs of the American academy of arts and sciences 13, no. 2 (1904): 61-117; A History of Italian Painting. New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1927; “An Interpretation of the so-called Harpy Tomb.” American Journal of Archaeology 11 no. 3 (1907): 321-338

Sources

“The History and Dispersal of the Vassar College Collection of Casts and Copies Oliver S. Tonks – Innovations in Art History.” http://vassun.vassar.edu/madull/tonks; Lavin, Marilyn Aronberg. The Eye of the Tiger: The Founding and Development of the Department of Art and Archaeology, 1883-1923, Princeton University. Princeton, NJ: Department of Art and Archaeology and Art Museum, 1983, p.19; [obituary:] “Prof. Oliver S. Tonks.” New York Times December 27, 1953. p. 60.

Tormo y Monzó, Elías

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Tormo y Monzó, Elías

Other Names:

Elias Tormo

Gender: male

Date Born: 1869

Date Died: 1954

Home Country/ies: Spain

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

Career(s): educators

Overview

Chair in art history at the University of Madrid; Minister of Public Instruction; his Monastery of Guadalupe was chosen for English translation by the Hispanic Society of America for their series Art in Spain. Tomro was among the first generation of professional Spanish art historians (Bazin), whose ranks included.

Selected Bibliography

The Monastery of Guadalupe. Art in Spain, [published] under the Patronage of the Hispanic Society of America. Barcelona: Hijos de J. Thomas, 1923.

Sources

Bazin, Germain. Histoire de l’histoire de l’art; de Vasari à nos jours. Paris: Albin Michel, 1986 p. 441.

Toussaint, Manuel

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Toussaint, Manuel

Gender: male

Date Born: 1895

Date Died: 1955

Place Born: Mexico City, Lea, New Mexico

Place Died: New York, NY, USA

Home Country/ies: Mexico

Subject Area(s): architecture (object genre), Colonial Latin American architecture styles, Colonial Latin American styles, Colonial Spanish American, colonialism, colonization, Latin American, sculpture (visual works), and Spanish (culture or style)

Institution(s): National Autonomous University of Mexico

Overview

Early work on the history of colonial Spain; architectural history of Latin America; created the Institute for aesthetic reserach at the University of Mexico. (Laboratorio de Arte)

Selected Bibliography

Tasco. Mexico 1931.; Arte mudejar en America. Mexico.; La catedral y las iglesias de Puebla. Mexico, 1954.

Sources

Bazin 454

Contributors: Lee Sorensen

Early work on the history of colonial Spain; architectural history of Latin America; created the Institute for aesthetic reserach at the University of Mexico. (Laboratorio de Arte)

Trachtenberg, Marvin

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Trachtenberg, Marvin

Other Names:

Marvin Lawrence Trachtenberg

Gender: male

Date Born: 1939

Place Born: Tulsa, OK, USA

Home Country/ies: United States

Subject Area(s): architecture (object genre), Gothic (Medieval), Italian (culture or style), Italian Renaissance-Baroque styles, Renaissance, and sculpture (visual works)

Overview

Scholar of Gothic and Italian Renaissance architecture; Edith Kitzmiller Professor of the History of Fine Arts, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. Trachtenberg’s parents were Russian Jewish immigrants who “barely survived the [Russian] Revolution” (Trachtenberg). His father, William Trachtenberg (1905-1973) and mother, Leona Fox (Trachtenberg) (1907-2000), settled in Oklahoma in the 1930s “dustbowl” where William worked as an independed oil producer. The younger Trachtenberg entered Yale University intending a career in science. However, the lectures of the literature scholar Harold Bloom (b. 1930) convinced him to switch to the humanities. He graduated magna cum laude in 1961, marrying Heidi Feldmeier the same year. Trachtenberg attended the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, on a Woodrow Wilson fellowship, 1961-1962 securing his A.M., in 1963. He gravitated to medieval and Renaissance architectural history studying under Wolfgang Lotz and Richard Krautheimer. A Fulbright fellowship in Florence, Italy, 1964-1966 and Bernard Berenson fellowship allowed him to complete his Ph. D. at New York University, in 1967. Trachtenberg began teaching at his alma mater while working on his dissertation in 1964 rising to assistant professor. His 1968 dissertation, written under Krautheimer, was on the campanile (tower) of the cathedral at Florence. He was appointed associate professor in 1969. He collaborated with medievalist Otto von Simson on the fourth volume on medieval art for the new edtion of the Propyläen Kunstgeschichte, which appeared in 1972. The revision of his dissertation, published as Campanile of Florence Cathedral: ‘Giotto’s Tower, 1971, was awarded the Alice Davis Hitchcock Prize (Society of Architectural Historians) in 1974. Trachtenberg was a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Senior Fellowship 1974-1975 and Villa I Tatti Fellow, Harvard University, 1974-76. He authored one of the final volumes in the Art in Context series, the brainchild of Hugh Honour and John Fleming and the publisher Allen Lane (1902-1970), on the Statue of Liberty in 1976. The same year he was promoted to (full) professor at the Institute. In 1985 he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. Trachtenberg was selected in 1988 to contribute the ground-breaking series of literature reviews for the Art Bulletin‘s “State of the Discipline” series on recent architectural history. He was named Edith Kitzmiller Professor of the History of Fine Arts in 1990. He divorced in 1992, marrying the art historian and IFA student, Anne-Marie Sankovitch (1959-2005) in 1993. In 1996 his article “Why the Pazzi Chapel is not by Brunelleschi,” Trachtenberg reattributed the famous chapel from Brunelleschi to Michelozzo. A monograph on the architecture of Florence, Dominion of the Eye: Urbanism, Art, and Power in Early Modern Florence, was published 1997, winning his second Hitchcock Prize. In 1999 he was awared the Charles Rufus Morey Prize by the College Art Association. He received a Graham Foundation Grant for 2000-2001. The same year he issued a revised edition of his advisor, Krautheimer, book on Rome: Profile of a City, 312-1308. Trachtenberg’s piece in the NewYork Times in 2003 endorsed Daniel Libeskind’s entry for the hotly debated Ground Zero site; shortly after which the architect won the commission. After the death of his second wife from cancer in 2005, he became engaged to the Barnard College historian Dorothy Ko (b. 1957). His students included Christine Smith, Anita Moskowitz, Lisa Reilly, Gary Radke, and Ena Giurescu. As a scholar Trachtenberg built a career on reinterpretation and rethinking the commonplaces of art history. His assertion that the “Gothic” was “medieval modernism” was frequently formulated in articles in Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, RES, and Gesta. Fundamental studies of major trecento buildings, particularly the Campanile and Palazzo Vecchio remain the standard treatment of the field. His co-authored textbook (with Isabelle Hyman), on western architecture is still the mainstay survey text for the topic.

Selected Bibliography

[dissertation:] The Campanile of Florence Cathedral. New York University,1968, published as The Campanile of Florence Cathedral: “Giotto’s Tower”. New York: New York University Press, 1971; and Hyman, Isabelle. Architecture: from Prehistory to Post-modernism: the Western Tradition. London: Academy Editions, 1986; The Statue of Liberty. Art in Context series. London: Allen Lane, 1976; and Hyman, Isabelle. Architecture, from Prehistory to Post-modernism: the Western Tradition. New York: H.N. Abrams, 1986; “Some Observations on Recent Architectural History.” Art Bulletin 70 (June 1988): 208-41; “Archeology, Merriment, and Murder: the First Cortile of the Palazzo Vecchio and its Transformations in the Late Florentine Republic.” The Art Bulletin 71 (December 1989): 565-609; “What Brunelleschi Saw: Monument and Site at the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence.” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 47 no. 1 (March 1988): 14-44; “Why the Pazzi Chapel is not by Brunelleschi.” Casabella (June 1996): 58-77; “Why the Pazzi Chapel is by Michelozzo.” Casabella (February 1997):, 56-75; Dominion of the Eye: Urbanism, Art, and Power in Early Modern Florence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997;

Sources

Trachtenberg, Marvin. The Statue of Liberty. Art in Context [series]. London: Allen Lane, 1976 [wrappers flap]; Goldberger Paul. “Challenge to the Origin of a Florentine Chapel: Asserting that a Famous Work of Brunelleschi was Built by a Follower.” New York Times January 1, 1997, p. 30; personal correspondence with the subject, August, 2009.

Trautscholdt, Eduard

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Trautscholdt, Eduard

Gender: male

Date Born: 1893

Date Died: unknown

Home Country/ies: Germany

Overview

Sources

Ladendorf, Heinz, ed. Festschrift Dr. h.c. Eduard Trautscholdt zum siebzigsten Geburtstag am 13. Januar. 1963. Hamburg: E. Hauswedell, 1965.

Trendall, A. D.

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Trendall, A. D.

Other Names:

Arthur Dale Trendall

Gender: male

Date Born: 1909

Date Died: 1995

Place Born: Auckland, New Zealand

Place Died: Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

Home Country/ies: Australia

Subject Area(s): ancient, ceramic ware (visual works), Classical, Italian (culture or style), and pottery (visual works)

Overview

Classical art historian of south Italian pottery from the 5th to the 4th centuries BC. Trendall’s father was a woodworker in New Zealand. A severe case of peritonitis forced him a year’s recuperation in bed where he developed a passion for literature. At 17 he enrolled at the University of Otago (then part of the University of New Zealand) to study mathematics, but changed after the hearing lectures of T. D. Adams, to classics. He also attended King’s College, Auckland. In 1931 he was awarded a postgraduate scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge, and became a Fellow there from 1936 to 1940. He traveled widely in Italy, exploring ancient Greek colonial sites. The influence of these early travels, as well as the work of his mentor, J. D. Beazley, led to his a study the Greek red figure pottery in southern Italy, first published in 1938 in the Bilder griechischer Vasen series and later translated into English as Early South Italian Vase-Painting. After graduation from Cambridge, Trendall moved to Rome where he had been awarded a scholarship. For the next two years he worked as the librarian at the British School in Rome studying Italiote vases, which was to be the foundation for all his later study. Between 1939-54 he held the Chair of Greek at the University of Sydney, Australia and from 1948 onwards, t he newly instituted Chair of Archaeology. His war years were spent in the Signals Intelligence, where he worked in cryptography, breaking Japanese diplomatic messages and codes. Trendall moved to Canberra in 1954 to become the first Master of University House. He assisted in the establishment of the Australian Humanities Research Council. Retiring in 1969 Trendall became a resident Fellow of La Trobe University, producing some of his most important work. Among the most important of his works are the two volume The Red-Figured Vases of Lucania, Campania and Sicily (1968), Illustrations of Greek Drama (1972), The Red-Figured Vases of Paestum (1987) and Greek Red-figured Fish-plates (1987). Trendall’s importance lies in his establishing the basic framework for the study of Greek-produced pottery in Italy. When he started his work, vases were scattered throughout the world, and the literature on the topic was small. Trendall compiled notes on more than 20,000 vases, establishing relationships between the painters, workshops and the use of themes on the pottery. By evaluating the frequency and representation of the scenes appearing on pottery, Trendall concluded, for example, that Euripedes, who was not particularly celebrated in his lifetime, later surpassed both Sophocles and Aeschylus in popularity, while Aristophanes lost his artistic following to Menander.

Selected Bibliography

Greek Red-figured Fish-plates. Basel: Vereinigung der Freunde antiker Kunst, 1987; and T. B. L. Webster. Illustrations of Greek Drama, New York: Praeger, 1971; Paestan Pottery: a Study of the Red-Figured Vases of Paestum, London: British School at Rome, 1936; Phlyax Vases. London: University (Institute of Classical Studies), 1967; Red Figure Vases of South Italy and Sicily : a Handbook. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1989; The Red-Figured Vases of Paestum. London: British School at Rome, 1987; Frühitaliotische Vasen. Bilder griechischer Vasen 12. Leipzig: Verlag Heinrich Keller, 1938, English, Early South Italian Vase-Painting. Mainz: Verlag P. von Zabern, 1974.

Sources

Obituary. The Tiimes (London), December 4, 1995

Tresham, Henry

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Tresham, Henry

Gender: male

Date Born: c. 1749-1751

Date Died: 1814

Place Born: Dublin, Ireland

Place Died: London, Greater London, England, UK

Home Country/ies: United Kingdom

Subject Area(s): British (modern) and catalogues raisonnés

Overview

Together with William Young Ottley, wrote a catalog for the British Gallery, 1818. Tresham was an art student at the Dublin Society of Artists where he won a prize in 1773. After moving to London, he met John Campbell, later 1st Baron Cawdor (1753-1821). It was likely with Campbell that Tresham journeyed to Rome in 1775 where he remained for 14 years. In Rome he met the various artists who comprised the classical revival movement, including Antonio Canova (Tresham was Campbell’s agent with Canova), Henry Fuseli, and Thomas Banks. Tresham worked primarily a painter, creating large-scale pictures from classical history for Frederick Augustus Hervey, 4th Earl of Bristol (1730-1803), Bishop of Derry. He also dealt in art and antiquities. In 1784, still in Italy, he issued his Le avventure di Saffo, a folio of aquatints. His stature as an artist and connoisseur was such that at his return to London in 1789 he immediately exhibited at the Royal Academy. He was appointed an Associate of the Royal Academy in 1791 full member of the Royal Academy in 1799. He was professor of painting 1807-09. Tresham continued to deal in art in England, his most famous and infamous sale being the group of supposedly authentic Etruscan vases to Frederick Howard, 5th Earl of Carlisle (1748-1825). Tresham began writing a guide to the British Gallery, but died of an unspecified illness before completion. It was taken over by William Young Ottley and completed in 1818. Tresham never married. Many of his drawings are housed at the Yale Center for British Art.

Selected Bibliography

and Ottley, William Young. The British Gallery of Pictures: Selected from the Most Admired Productions of the Old Masters in Great Britain, accompanied with Descriptions, Historical and Critical. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1818.

Sources

Dictionary of Art; Egerton, Judy. “Henry Tresham.” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

Titi, Filippo

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Titi, Filippo

Gender: male

Date Born: 1639

Date Died: 1702

Place Born: Città di Castello, Perugia, Umbria, Italy

Place Died: Città di Castello, Perugia, Umbria, Italy

Home Country/ies: Italy

Subject Area(s): architecture (object genre), Italian (culture or style), painting (visual works), Roman (ancient Italian culture or period), and sculpture (visual works)

Overview

Author of Studio di pittura, scoltura et architettura nelle chiese di Roma (1686), an objectiveannotated catalog of Roman artistic treasures.

Author of Studio di pittura, scoltura et architettura nelle chiese di Roma (1686), an objectiveannotated catalog of Roman artistic treasures.

Tikkanen, J. J.

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Tikkanen, J. J.

Other Names:

J. J. Tikkanen

Gender: male

Date Born: 07 December 1859

Date Died: 20 June 1930

Place Born: Helsinki, Newland Regin, Finland

Place Died: Helsinki, Newland Regin, Finland

Home Country/ies: Finland

Subject Area(s): Italian (culture or style)

Overview

Scholar of Italian art; Finland’s first professor of art history. He was born in Helsinki, Finland, which was formerly part of Russia. Tikkanen’s father was the nationalist writer, journalist and co-founder of the newspaper Suometar, Paavo (Paul) Tikkanen (1823-1873) and his mother, Helena Maria Tengström (1829-1875), whose father (the boy’s grandfather) was the Helsinki University professor of philosophy Johann Jakob Tengström (1787-1858). The death of both parents at an early age resulted in his living with his mother’s relative. The household spoke Swedish, at that time the tongue of the educated class in Finland as the region was at that time an autonomous Grand Duchy within the Russian Empire; Tikkanen was educated in that language. After an initial interest in botony, he trained under the early Finnish esthetician and proto-art-historian Carl Gustaf Estlander, who taught occasional classes in art history. Estlander suggested Tikkanen to study art from the works themselves and consentrate on archives. He received his master’s degree in 1880 beginning a friendship with the professor of art history at the Technische Hochschule in Berlin, Eduard Dobbert, who advised Tikkanen in his early career. Tikkanen studied both art history and studio art at the Akademie der Künste (Munich Academy of Art), the former under Moritz Carrière. He received his Ph.D in 1884 with a dissertation topic on Giotto under Estlander in Helsinki. The same year he was appointed docent (adjunct professor) of aesthetics and art history at the University of Helsinki, the first professional art historian in Finland, lecturing exclusively in Swedish. He also taught drawing at the Privata svenska flickskolan [school for girls] in Helsinki (to 1905). He travelled in Europe 1885-1889, meeting Martin Conway in Berlin. Everywhere Tikkenan went, he sketched his subjects, leaving vast visual notebooks for later reference. These notebooks were partially rersponsible for one of his two great contriubtions to art history. The first in 1889, was the similarity between the mosaics of San Marco and the illustrations of the fifth-century Greek manuscript, the Cotton Genesis. His second, the discovery of a manuscript of St. John Climacus (Vat. cod. graec. 1754) which had been overlooked by art historians. By 1897 he was solely professor of art history at the University. This allowed majors of art history at the University, which Tikkanen supervised. The following year he was appointed head of sculpture collection at the University, a position which he held until his death. He purchased and taught from casts of classical sculpture located in the museum. He began lecturing in Finnish in 1907–a language in which he was never completely fluent. Tikkanen wrote a vernacular art history survey, Kuvaamataiteet uudemmalla ajalla (Art History: Painting and Sculpture) in 1910. A chair of art history was established in Helniki in 1920 which he held with funds donated by Privy Counsellor Hjalmar Linder (1862-1921), known as the Linder chair. His art history survey was translated into Swedish in 1925. He retired in 1926 (age 69) and was succeeded by his student, Onni Okkonen as professor art history at the University of Helsinki. After his death, his student, the eminent Italo-sinologist, Osvald Sirén, wrote a monograph on Tikkanen. Among his pupils, Sirén became the first professor of art history in Sweden in 1908; another, Tancred Borenius, was appointed professor of art history at University College London in 1922, and Onni Okkonen, Tikkanen’s successor. His son was the architect Robert Tikkanen (1888-1947) and his grandson the author/artist Henrik Tikkanen (1924-1984). Tikkanen left a voluminous correspondence and notebooks full of sketches of the art he studied, held in the department of art history at the University of Helsinki. Though Tikkanen held the first appointment in art history in Finland, he was not the first to teach it in either than country or Scandanavia. Previously, professors of esthetics had also lectured on the topic. These forbears included Estlander in Finland, Carl Rupert Nyblom (1832-1907), at Uppsala, and Gustaf Ljunggren (1823-1905). Tikkanen avoided the esthetic approach to art history as his mentor, Estlander employed (Vakkari, Shaping, 2007). Sirén notes a Vasarian view of art (styles reaching maturity and then decline), especially in Tikkenan’s early writing. His position in the field of art history in Finland corresponded to the methodological and pedagogic approaches of Lionello Venturi in Italy. The art theory of Benedetto Croce and the Kunstwollen approach to art of Aloïs Riegl are also reflected in his writing. Between 1897 and his retirement in 1926, Tikkanen trained the first generations of art historians in Finland, establishing the principles of the discipline there. These were a strong pedagogic mission and the so-called scientific approach (documentation and adhering to less-subject analysis of art). Fifty years after Tikkenan’s death, Kurt Weitzmann acknowledged him as responsible for the “the fundamental observation that there exists a very close relationship between the Genesis mosaics of the Narthex of San Marco and the miniatures of the so-called Cotton Genesis,” (Demus, Otto. Mosaics of San Marco, 2, p. 105, 142).

Selected Bibliography

[dissertation:] Der malerische Styl Giottos: Versuch zu einer Charakteristik desselben. Helsingfors: J.C. Frenckell, 1884; [collected studies] Studien über die Farbengebung in der mittelalterlichen buchmalerei. Borenius, Tancred, ed. Helsingfors: Akademische buchhandlung, 1933; Die Genesismosaiken von S. Marco in Venedig und ihr verhältniss zu den miniaturen der Cottonbibel, nebst einer untersuchung über den ursprung der mittelalterlichen Genesisdarstellung besonders in der byzantinischen und italienischen Kunst. Helsingfors: Druckerei der Finnischen Litteratur-Gesellschaft, 1889; Kuvaamataiteet uudemmalla ajalla. Helsinki: Otava, 1910; Die Beinstellungen in der Kunstgeschichte: ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der künstlerischen Motive. Helsingfors: Druckerei der Finnischen Litteraturgesellschaft, 1912; Die moderne bildende Kunst in Finnland. Helsinki: Druckerei des Statsraates, 1925, English, Modern art in Finland Helsinski: G.P.O., 1926; Borenius, Tancred, ed. Studien über die Farbengebung in der mittelalterlichen Buchmalerei. Helsingfors: Akademische buchhandlung, 1933.

Sources

Sirén, Osvald. Johan Jakob Tikkanen som konsthistoriker. Helsingfors: Mercator, 1933; Ringbom, Sixten. Art History in Finland before 1920. Helsinki: 1986, pp. 62 ff; Vakkari, Johanna. “Alcuni contemporanei finlandesi di Lionello Venturi: Osvald Siren, Tancred Borenius, Onni Okkonen.” Storia dell’Arte 101 (2002): 108-17; Vakkari, Johanna. “J. J. Tikkanen and the Teaching of Art History.” in, Suominen-Kokkonen, Renja, ed. The Shaping of Art History in Finland. Helsinki: Taidehistorian Seura, 2007, pp. 69-83; Vakkari, Johanna. Focus on Form: J. J. Tikkanen, Giotto and Art Research in the 19th Century. Helsinki: Vammalan Kirjapaino Oy, 2007; Hoffmann, Christian, and Vakkari, Johanna. Towards a Science of Art History: J. J. Tikkanen and Art Historical Scholarship in Europe. Helsinki: Taidehistorian Seura, 2009.

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