Full Name: Zimmer, Friedrich
Gender: male
Date Born: 1855
Date Died: 1919
Home Country/ies: Germany
Subject Area(s): Classical
Classicist and art historian at Heidelberg. Mentioned as having taught Brendel.
Classicist and art historian at Heidelberg. Mentioned as having taught Brendel.
Full Name: Zigrosser, Carl
Other Names:
Gender: male
Date Born: 1891
Date Died: 1975
Place Born: Indianapolis, Marion, IN, USA
Place Died: Montagnola, Switzerland
Home Country/ies: United States
Subject Area(s): prints (visual works)
Career(s): curators
Philadelphia Museum of Art Prints curator, 1941-1963. Zigrosser was the son of an Austrian immigrant, Hugo A. Zigrosser (1860-1935), a civil engineer, and an American, Emma Haller (Zigrosser) (b. 1870), both Roman Catholics. The younger Zigrosser was fluent in German from an early age. After graduating from the Newark (N. J.) Academy in 1908, he attended Columbia College, Columbia University, with the intent of becoming a chemist. He received his B. A. in three years (1911) and began graduate work in comparative literature, where he read the esthetics of Benedetto Croce and heard lectures by George Santayana (1863-1952). He joined Frederick Keppel & Company, a New York print dealer. There he learned the art trade and met many famous collectors, literati, artists (most notably Rockwell Kent) and curators, including William M. Ivins, Jr., founder of the Prints Department at the Metropolitan Museum Art and Juliana R. Force director of the Whitney Studio Club (later Whitney Museum of Art). During this time he contributed to and edited the Modern School Magazine. He married a Greenwich Village feminist, Florence “Kinglet” King (1867-1945), twelve years his senior, in 1915. Zigrosser was a conscientious objector to World War I and while the war still going, he left Keppels in 1918 to become a research assistant for the United Engineering Society library. In 1919 he founded and was director of the Weyhe Gallery (in conjunction with the Weyhe Bookstore), which he directed until 1940. During those years, Zigrosser helped establish many American artists, included the sculptor John Bernard Flannagan, (1895/6-1942), whom he met in 1926. Zigrosser published Six Centuries of Prints in 1937 as a primer on graphics collecting to educate novices in the field. The book was a monumental success and raised Zigrosser’s reputation as a print authority. In 1941 he was appointed curator of prints, drawings and rare books at the Philadelphia Museum of Art by its director, Fiske Kimball. Under Zigrosser’s direction, the collection grew from 15,000 items to over 100,000. Among these were the Watteau engravings from the Rosenwald collection, the Osborne collection of folk prints, the Scholz collection of 17th-century prints, and the Alfred Stieglitz’ collection of photographs. After his first wife’s death in 1945, Zigrosser married Laura Canadè, a Weyhe Gallery employee, in 1946. He was named a trustee of the Solomon Guggenheim Museum in 1952. In 1955 Zigrosser was appointed the museum’s vice-director. He retired in 1963 as a curator emeritus but remained as an adviser to the print department. Zigrosser issued the catalogue raisonné of John Marin prints, The Complete Etchings of John Marin in 1969, as the exhibition catalog for the show at the Philadelphia Museum. It is still considered the best study on Marin’s prints. He died at his home in Switzerland. Zigrosser’s was one of a number of early American curators who raised the public’s awareness for graphics as a serious art form. His introductory text, Six Centuries of Prints (1937) went through numerous editions during Zigrosser’s lifetime under a variety of titles: The Book of Fine Prints: an Anthology of Printed Pictures and Introduction to the Study of Graphic Art in the West and the East (1956) and Prints and their Creators: a World History: an Anthology of Printed Pictures [etc.] (1974).
The Expressionists: a Survey of their Graphic Art. New York: G. Braziller, 1957; Prints: Thirteen Illustrated Essays on the Art of the Print. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston/Print Council of America, 1962; The Artist in America: Twenty-four Close-ups of Contemporary Printmakers. New York: A.A. Knopf, 1942; Rockwellkentiana: Few Words and Many Pictures by R. K. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1933; Six Centuries of Fine Prints. New York: Covici-Friede 1937; The Complete Etchings of John Marin. Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1969.
My Own Shall Come to Me: A Personal Memoir and Picture Chronicle. Haarlem, Netherlands: Casa Laura, 1971; Zigrosser, Carl. A World of Art and Museums. Philadelphia: Art Alliance Press, 1975; personal correspondence, Steve Mayhew, April 2011; [obituary:] “Carl Zigrosser, Prints Curator At Philadelphia Museum, Dies.” New York Times November 27, 1975, p. 36.
Contributors: Emily Crockett and Lee Sorensen
Philadelphia Museum of Art Prints curator, 1941-1963. Zigrosser was the son of an Austrian immigrant, Hugo A. Zigrosser (1860-1935), a civil engineer, and an American, Emma Haller (Zigrosser) (b. 1870), both Roman Catholics. The younger Zigrosser
Full Name: Zervos, Christian
Other Names:
Gender: male
Date Born: 01 January 1889
Date Died: 12 September 1970
Place Born: Argostoli, Cephalonia, Greece
Place Died: Paris, Île-de-France, France
Home Country/ies: Greece
Subject Area(s): Abstract Expressionist, Cubist, Expressionist (style), and Post-Impressionist
Picasso scholar and magazine editor. Zervos was born in Greece but spent his childhood in Alexandria, Egypt. Bby age 22 had permanently settled in Paris where he received his doctorate (doctorat ès lettres) at the Sorbonne. Zervos joined the publishing firm Editions Morancé writing art articles for the magazine L’Art d’aujourd ‘hui in 1924. As an editor, he met many of the artists about whom the magazine wrote: Henri Matisse, Georges Braque, Ferdinand Léger, and Pablo Picasso, for whom the latter exerted a strong influence on Zerevos’ life. He left Morancé in 1926 to found his own journal Cahiers d’art, whose offices were located initially at the rue Bonaparte. The Cahiers featured contributions by scholars and critics alike in a wide range of fields, from prehistoric art to modern and was noted for its layout and presentation as much as its content. Zervos married Yvonne Marion (1905-1970) who ran an art gallery, Galerie du Dragon, next to the new location of her husband’s shop, the rue Dragon on the left bank of Paris. Madame Zervos became an integral part of her husband’s accomplishment and assembling their art collection. The publishing arm of the Cahiers issued monographs by important art historians, including Will Grohmann and Henry-Russell Hitchcock. Zervos himself issued an eclectic variety of monographs, including ones on Henri Rousseau, Greek art and Frank Lloyd Wright. His publishing group took over the project to document Matisse, first commissioned by Bernheims and then Guillaume, under the authorship of Matisse’s son-in-law, the art historian Georges Duthuit. Zervos settled upon his life’s work, a catalogue raisonné of Pablo Picasso in the early 1930s. Begun in 1932, the catalog was completed in 33 volumes after Zervos’ death. The first exhibition of their archeological collection was mounted in 1934. In 1936 the couple worked to save many works of art from the Spanish civil war and the following year organized a show at the Jeu de Paume of the origins and development of international art. World War II interrupted many of Zervos’ publishing projects, including the Cahiers, which suspended 1941-1943, resuming in 1944 to last until the end of his life. After the war he devoted his energies to the Picasso catalog. His wife’s shop, moved to larger premises in 1939 and renamed the May Gallery, exhibited many of the major French artists active between the wars. His wife died early in 1970 and Zeros suffered a heart attack in Paris later the same year dying at age 81. In December of the same year, an exposition of their collection was mounted at the Grand Palais in Paris. Zervos’ catalogue raisonné of Picasso was the first comprehensive one for the artist and remains an important source. He did not include, however, the works from the artist’s own colllection of his, an omission of at least several important pieces.
edited, Cahiers d’art. Paris: Éditions Cahiers d’art, 1926-1960. 35 vols.; Matthias Grünewald: le retable d’Isenheim. Paris: Éditions Cahiers d’art, 1936. Picasso étudié par le Dr Jung.” Cahiers d’art 7 (1932): 352-54; Georges Braque. Paris: Cahiers d’art, 1933; Pablo Picasso [catalogue raisonné]. Paris: Éditions Cahiers d’art, 1932-78. Fernand Léger: œuvres de 1905 à 1952. Paris: Éditions Cahiers d’art,1952; L’art des Cyclades, du début à la fin de l’âge du bronze, 2500-1100 avant notre ère. Paris: Éditions Cahiers d’art, 1957.
[bibliography:] “Bibliiographie des Articles de Christian Zervos parus dans la Revue ‘Cahiers d’art.” Hommage à Christian et Yvonne Zervos. Paris: Centre national d’art contemporain, 1970, pp. [9-12]; Fontbrune, Marc. “Biographie.” Hommage à Christian et Yvonne Zervos. Paris: Centre national d’art contemporain, 1970, pp [5-6]; Monad-Fontaine, Isabelle. “Zervos.” The Dictionary of Art 33: 638; [obituaries] Gazette des Beaux-Arts (December 1970): 32; ARTnews 69 (October 1970): 32; “Christian Zervos, Expert on Picasso, Dies in Paris.” New York Times Sepember 14, 1970, p. 39; “M. Christian Zervos.” Times (London) September 15, 1970, p. 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. 102, mentioned.
Contributors: Lee Sorensen
Picasso scholar and magazine editor. Zervos was born in Greece but spent his childhood in Alexandria, Egypt. Bby age 22 had permanently settled in Paris where he received his doctorate (doctorat ès lettres) at the Sorbonne. Zervos joined the publi
Full Name: Zabelin, Ivan
Other Names:
Gender: male
Date Born: 1820
Date Died: 1909
Place Born: Tver', Tver Oblast, Russia
Place Died: Moscow, Russia
Home Country/ies: Russia
Subject Area(s): archaeology, conservation (discipline), conservation (process), and Russian (culture or style)
Career(s): conservators (people in conservation)
Historian and archaeologist of Russian art, conservator and museum director. A student of Timofey Granovsky at the Moscow University, Zabelin’s early years were spent in the Kremlin Armory (1837-59). Here he wrote his early monograph on metalwork (1853). In 1859 he joined the St. Petersburg Archaeological Commission, serving until 1876. Between 1879-1888 he was Chair of the Society of Russian History and Antiquity, Moscow University. During that period, he also accepted the position of director of the History Museum (in Moscow) 1883-1908. His major book on Russian art and architecture, Russkoye iskusstvo, 1900, was produced during this final period. Methodologically, Zabelin’s early works blend the theories of Vissarion Belinsky and the German aesthetician Ludwig Feuerbach. His later writings adopt Positivistic arguments, prevalent in historic circles of the nineteenth century. Employing original documents and artifacts, rather than relying on generalized theory, he created a material history of Russia. Architectural details, everyday objects, written sources, etc. all formed the basis for his histories. He is significant for theorizing the relationship between Byzantine art and the old Russian, and how the latter assimilated its traditional representation into a feerer form. His work on wooden architecture and stone architecture remains influential today.
Domashnii byt russkago naroda v xvi-xvii vekakh. 2 vols. Moscow, 1862.
I. E. Zabelin: 170 let so dnia rozhdeniia : materialy nauchnykh chtenii GIM, 29-31 oktiabria 1990 goda Moscow: Gos. ordena Lenina istoricheskii muzei, 1992; Formozov, Aleksandr Aleksandrovich. Istorik Moskvy I.E. Zabelin. Moscow: Moskovskii rabochii, 1984; V. I. Shchepkin. I. Ye. Zabelin kak istorik russkogo iskusstva. Moscow, 1912; The Dictionary of Art
Historian and archaeologist of Russian art, conservator and museum director. A student of Timofey Granovsky at the Moscow University, Zabelin’s early years were spent in the Kremlin Armory (1837-59). Here he wrote his early monograph on metalwork
Full Name: Zerner, Henri Thomas
Gender: male
Date Born: 1939
Place Born: Suresnes, Île-de-France, France
Home Country/ies: United States
Subject Area(s): prints (visual works)
Career(s): curators
Curator, Prints, Fogg Museum, Harvard University. Lic es Letters (1961), Doctor of Fine Arts from University of Paris (1969). Curator, Painting and Graphic Arts Museum, Prints and Drawing Museum, Rhode Island School of Design (1965-1972).
Ecoles de Fontainebleau, Gravures. Paris: Arts et Metiers Graphiques, 1969.
Who’s Who in American Art 22 (1997-98):
Contributors: Emily Crockett and Lee Sorensen
Curator, Prints, Fogg Museum, Harvard University. Lic es Letters (1961), Doctor of Fine Arts from University of Paris (1969). Curator, Painting and Graphic Arts Museum, Prints and Drawing Museum, Rhode Island School of Design (1965-1972).
Full Name: Zeri, Federico
Gender: male
Date Born: 1921
Date Died: 04 October 1998
Place Born: Rome, Lazio, Italy
Place Died: Mentana, Rome, Lazio, Italy
Home Country/ies: Italy
Subject Area(s): Italian (culture or style), Italian Renaissance-Baroque styles, and Renaissance
Career(s): art collectors
Collector and art historian of renaissance Italy. Zeri was born into a wealthy Roman family. He attended Rome University, where he initially studied botany. In 1944 he switched to the department of fine art under Pietro Toesca, a leading scholar of (then) undervalued Italian medieval art. Toesca introduced him to Roberto Longhi. He also made the personal acquaintance of influential rival to Longhi, Harvard art historian Bernard Berenson. Zeri described his meeting with Berenson as lasting “from 16:32 to 16:54 precisely”. After graduating, Zeri worked for the Italian Ministry for Cultural Heritage in its fine arts committee for six years. In 1952, however, Zeri left, claiming that mismanagement and bureaucratic lethargy in the ministry were destroying the very monuments they were intended to save. Others suggested that Giulio Carlo Argan, the Inspector, actually dismissed Zeri for reasons of conflict of interest with private work. This proved to be a boon for Zeri, who developed his profile as an art historian by writing and lecturing. He published catalogs from two famous private collections in Rome, the Galleria Spada (1954) and the Galleria Pallavicini (1959). He advised collectors such as the Venetian Count Vittorio Cini. He was a visiting professor in the United States at Harvard and Columbia. In 1957, still only 36, he published Pittura e Controriforma, a book on Mannerism praised by Donald Posner) and was commissioned to catalog of the Italian paintings for the Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Florentine School, 1971; The Venetian School, 1973; and The Siennese School, 1980). At roughly the same time, he also collaborated with Burton Fredericksen on the Inventories of Italian paintings in the United States. In 1976 he published a similar catalog of Italian painting in Baltimore’s Walter Art Gallery. These are considered among his best scholarhsip. In the 1980s Zeri took over co-editorship of the 13-volume Storia dell’arte italiana, the scholarly survey of Italian art. In later years, he focused his writing on forgery and issues of methodology. L’Inchiostro Variopinto (1985) recounts his unmasking of fakes. Dietro L’Immagine: conversazioni sull’arte di leggere l’arte (1987, translated into English as Behind the Image, 1990) focused on methodology. Zeri was appointed a founding member of the Board of the J. Paul Getty Museum in Malibu. In 1993, when he could not dissuade the museum from purchasing a Greek kouros, which he insisted was a forgery, he resigned in protest. The incident was widely reported and today the museum lists the piece as “circa 530 B.C. or modern forgery.” In 1994 he published Giorno per Giorno nella Pittura a book highlighting lesser-known works in Italy that Zeri championed. Although he chided his country as unfit to be a custodian of its own treasures, he supervised the restoration of the Royal Palace and the Sforza Castle in Milan shortly before his death. Zeri was awarded an honorary degree from the University of Bologna, nearly the only honor he received within Italy. He subsequently left his villa/museum/library to the University. Zeri’s methodology reflects the connoisseurship approach of Berenson and Longhi, though he disparaged both men in later years. When writing in his area of expertise, Italian painting from the 12th to the 16th centuries, or even as far afield as Modigliani, Zeri was capable of greatness. He shunned the traditional monograph format, focusing instead on erudite, well- researched yet readable shorter articles and scholarly museum catalogs. Yet Zeri personified the eccentric art historian: he toured visitors through his 1960s villa, filled with important works of art next to kitchy objet d’art, subjecting guests to his unique interpretations. Michelangelo, he once said, was such a poor painter that it would not have been a great loss if his Sistine Chapel paintings had been allowed to crumble. He characterized Ludovisi Throne (now in the Palazzo Altemps) as a 19th-century fake rather than the fifth century BC Greek sculpture generally believed today to be. He and the conservator Bruno Zanardi, denied Giotto’s hand in the Basilica of St. Francis at Assisi frescos. At the root of many of his excellent re-attributions was his scorn for the Italian academy which he chided in almost every submission of his newspaper and radio program. To the notion that Florence was the birthplace of the renaissance innovation, Zeri characterized as a “sad episode of cultural hooliganism.” Although he had criticized Longhi’s authenticating questionable works of art for monetary gain, similar accusations were also made against him.
and Gardner, Elizabeth E. Pittura e Controriforma: L’arte senza tempo di Scipione da Gaeta. Turin: Einaudi, 1957; [Metropolitan Museum of Art Catalogs] Italian Paintings : a Catalogue of the Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, North Italian School. New York: The Museum, 1986; Italian Paintings: Florentine School; a Catalogue of the Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Greenwich, CT: New York Graphic Society, 1971; Italian Paintings: Sienese and Central Italian Schools: a Catalogue of the Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art . New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1980; Italian Paintings: Venetian School; a Catalogue of the Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Greenwich, CT: New York Graphic Society,1973; and Packard, Elizabeth C. G. Italian Paintings in the Walters Art Gallery Baltimore: Walters Art Gallery, 1976; Diari di lavoro 1. Turin: G. Einaudi, 1983; La Galleria Pallavicini in Roma : catalogo dei dipinti. Florence: Sansoni, 1959; La Galleria Spada in Roma: catalogo dei dipinti. Florence: Sansoni 1954; and Francesco Rossi. La raccolta Morelli nell’Accademia Carrara Milan: Silvana, 1986; L’inchiostro variopinto. Milan: Longanesi, 1985; Dietro l’immagine: conversazioni sull’arte di leggere l’arte. Venice: N. Pozza, 1998, English, Behind the Image: the Art of Reading Paintings. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1987; and Fredericksen, Burton B. Census of pre-nineteenth-century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972.
[autobiography] Confesso che ho sbagliato (“I confess I was wrong”). Milan: Longanesi, 1995; [cited] Previtali, Giovanni. “The Periodization of Italian Art History.” History of Italian Art. vol. 2 Cambridge: Polity Press, 1994, p. 16, note 18; Dolcetta, Marco. Federico Zeri: un velo di silenzio. Milan: Rizzoli,1999; Bona Castellotti, Marco. Conversazioni con Federico Zeri. Parma: Ugo Guanda, 1988; Federico Zeri: diario marchigiano, 1948-1988. Turin: U. Allemandi per la Banca delle Marche, 2000; Bolla, Luisella, and Cardini, Flaminia. Federico Zeri: l’enfant terrible della televisione italiana. Rome: Rai Eri, 2000; Posner, Donald. “Introduction.” Friedlaender, Walter. Mannerism and Anti-Mannerism in Italian Painting. 2nd ed. New York: Columbia University Press, 1965, pp. xvii; [obituaries] The Daily Telegraph (London). November 2, 1998, p. 21; The Times (London). October 21, 1998; Anne Hanley. The Independent (London), October 7, 1998, p. 7 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/obituary-federico-zeri-1176615
Contributors: Emily Crockett and Lee Sorensen
Collector and art historian of renaissance Italy. Zeri was born into a wealthy Roman family. He attended Rome University, where he initially studied botany. In 1944 he switched to the department of fine art under Pietro Toesca
Full Name: Zeitler, Rudolf
Other Names:
Gender: male
Date Born: 28 April 1912
Date Died: July 1984
Place Born: Cologne, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany
Place Died: Uppsala, Sweden
Home Country/ies: Germany
Career(s): educators
University of Uppsala professor 1965-1977. Zeitler’s parents were Eugen Zeitler (1880-1922), an engineer, and Elsa Kühn (Zeitler) (1884-1922). Both parents were killed in a mountaineering accident in Berchtesgaden when Zeitler was ten; he was subsequently raised by his maternal grandfather in Kaiserslautern, Germany. He attended the Cologne and Kaiserslautern high schools (gymnasium) graduating in 1930. The same year he began study of history and art history in Munich, Marburg (under Richard Hamann), and Berlin. Because his mother was a converted Jew, Zeitler was forced to flee Germany after Hitler’s rise to power in 1933. He first fled to Czechoslovakia in that year continuing study in Prague. He was granted a Ph.D. in history from Prague in 1936, writing a dissertation on Sophicles and the polis under Victor Ehrenberg (1891-1976). In 1937, pending the annexation of that country to Germany, Zeitler moved to Sweden, teaching in the Gymnasium in Uppsala. Zeitler found a mentor in the Uppsala University art historian Gregor Paulsson, publishing a monograph on Albrecht Dürer in 1946. He married Hannelore Günthert (b. 1919), an historian, the following year. Zeitler published his habilitation, Klassizismus und Utopia, written under Paulsson, in 1954. He taught as a privatdozent until his appointment as professor at the University in 1964. Zeitler used his classical education write on the comparatively neglected area of nineteenth-century Neo-classicism. He edited Figura between 1965 and 1977. In 1966 he and Anders Éman published a ground-breaking volume on nineteenth-century art in the Propyläen Kunstgeschichte series. Unlike many earlier surveys, it treated Neo-classicism as a significant art movement and not simply a dry precursor to Realism and Impressionism. He emphasized artistic theory of the era as a way to understand the art, an approach critized by some was ignoring truly popular taste. Zeitler eschewed the emerging post-war Warburg-school tradition of Erwin Panofsky that used iconographical interpretation. Instead he approached the period as a characteristic, multinational expression of its particular time in history (Éman, NZZ 2005). Zeitler’s most important book, Klassizismus und Utopia, emphasized Neo-classicism as the embodiment of significant bourgeois values, including utopian/dystopian views, which formed the basis for modern populist art. His rehabilitation of many neglected masterpieces of the years around 1800 marked an important revisionist approach to art history. His characterizing of the period as a dialectic, “Kontrasterlebnis” was adopted by other scholars of the nineteenth century, notably Werner Hofmann. He personally viewed his work as a continuation of the German-Jewish tradition of scholarship (Éman NZZ 2005).
[bibliography to 1977] Johannesson, Lena. “Bibliographie Rudolf Zeitlers.” in, Aufsätze zur Kunstwissenschaft. Tryck, Sweden: Offset Center, 1977, pp. 157-170; [dissertation:] Sophokles und die Polis. Prague, 1936; [habilitation:] Klassizismus und Utopia: Interpretationen zu Werken von David, Canova, Carstens, Thorwaldsen, Koch. Uppsala, published in Figura 5; edited. Les Pays du Nord et Byzance (Scandinavie et Byzance): actes du colloque nordique et international de byzantinologie tenu à Upsal 20-22 avril 1979. Uppsala: The University of Uppsala, 1981; and Éman, Anders. Die Kunst des 19. Jahrhunderts. Propyläen Kunstgeschichte 11. Berlin: Propyläen Verlag, 1966.
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. 806-809; Kultermann, Udo. The History of Art History. New York: Abaris, 1993, pp. 191, 246; “Till Rudolf Zeitler.” Konsthistorisk Tidskrift 56 no1 (1987): 1; [obituaries:] Éman, Anders. “Eine Frage des Ausdrucks: zum Tod des deutsch-jüdisches Kunsthistoriker Rudolf Zeitlers.” Neue Zürcher Zeitung no. 41 February 18, 2005, p. 42; Éman, Anders. “Rudolf Zeitler–liv och konsthistoria.” Konsthistorisk Tidskrift 74 no. 4 (2005): 194-197.
University of Uppsala professor 1965-1977. Zeitler’s parents were Eugen Zeitler (1880-1922), an engineer, and Elsa Kühn (Zeitler) (1884-1922). Both parents were killed in a mountaineering accident in Berchtesgaden when Zeitler was ten; he was subs
Full Name: Zarnecki, George
Other Names:
Gender: male
Date Born: 1915
Date Died: 2008
Place Born: Stara Osota, Warsaw, Poland
Place Died: London, Greater London, England, UK
Home Country/ies: Poland
Subject Area(s): British Isles Medieval styles, English (culture or style), Medieval (European), and Romanesque
Career(s): educators
Courtauld Institute of Art medievalist, particularly English Romanesque. Zarnecki’s father, Zygmunt Zarnecki, was a Polish Jew converted to Catholicism working as a civil engineer in Russia at the time of Zarnecki’s birth; his mother was Russian, Julia Wolszczan (Zarnecki). He was born in Stara Osota, Russia, which is present-day Stara Ochata, Warsaw, Poland. The younger Zarnecki attended Cracow University, Poland, where he worked as a junior assistant in the Art History Institute, 1936-1939, earning an M.A. in 1938. Zarnecki taught at the University of Cracow until 1939. With the invasion of Poland by Germany, his family fled to Bucharest and he to Itlay and then France where he joined the Polish Army in 1939, serving in France. He was awarded the Polish Cross of Valor and Croix de Guerre in 1940, but was taken as a prisoner of war by the Germans the same year and narrowly escaped the concentration camp for his Jewish heritage. In 1942 he heroically escaped, using forged papers, but was interned in Spain until allowed to emigrate to England in 1943. He was commissioned by the United Kingdom in 1943 advancing to the rank of lance-corporal, though still a Polish soldier. He met Anne Leslie Frith at Regents Park tube station [air raid shelter] in 1944, marrying her in 1945. In 1944, too, he met Anthony Blunt who gave him a job translating texts at the Courtauld Institute of Art. By 1945, Zarnecki was assistant in the Conway library, the photographic archive of medieval art and architecture at the Courtauld Institute. He entered the Institute for his Ph.D. where Warburg Institute scholar Fritz Saxl suggested he research English Romanesque sculpture. The result was his 1950 dissertation at the Courtauld Institute, Regional Schools in English Sculpture in the 12th century. In 1949 he became the librarian of the Conway Library. While librarian, he published rewritten versions of his dissertation as English Romanesque Sculpture 1066-1140 in 1951 and Later English Romanesque Sculpture 1140-1210 in 1953. This was followed by English Romanesque Lead Sculpture in 1957 and Early Sculpture at Ely Cathedral, 1958. He resigned as librarian in 1959 when he was made a Reader of Courtauld (now part of the University of London), his first teaching position. For the academic year 1960-1961 he was Slade Professor of Fine Arts, Oxford University. About this tiime, he and the French medievalist Jean Bony resolved to create a corpus of Romanesque sculpture in the British isles while touring Herefordshire. Zarnecki was appointed deputy director of the Courtuald in 1961. His one book on Continental art, Gislebertus: Sculptor of Autun appeared the same year. His elevation to professor of history of art came in 1963. That year he issued his Romanesque Sculpture at Lincoln Cathedral. He served as member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey in 1966. Under the directionship of Blunt the Courtauld expanded with Zarnecki doing the main administrative work. He was elected Fellow of the British Academy in 1968, made CBE in 1970. His skills as a manager implied his succession to Blunt when his director retired in 1974, but he never applied, wanting to return to teaching and research.Commissioned by Abrams publishers to write Art of the Medieval World, a survey-style text akin to others in that publisher’s series, Zarnecki produced a solid volume of a particularly hard topic–art from the 4th to the 13th century–in 1975. He retired professor Emeritus in 1982. In retirement, Zarnecki mounted an important exhibition, “English Romanesque Art” at the Hayward Gallery in 1984. An expanded version of his Lincoln Romanesque sculpture book appeared in 1988. Together with Peter Erik Lasko, he devoted his last years to compiling the index of his earlier years, the Corpus of Romanesque Sculpture in Britain and Ireland, now as a publicly available digital project, (www.crsbi.ac.uk). He was revered by generations of students as deputy director of the Courtauld Institute of Art at the University of London. His books on the English Romanesque established the dating structure and sequence of the monuments which remain accepted today, especially difficult since the English Reformation destroyed many monuments compared to Continental Europe. Since much of the extant Romanesque sculpture was incorporated in churches, Zarnecki’s first books exmanined the history of the architectural and then a closer analysis of the sculpture itself. Though largely stylistic in his analysis, he considered material, patronage and iconography as well. Compared to the other expatriate art historians working in England during the time, Zarnecki was a centrist. He avoided the approach of Nikolaus Bernard Leon Pevsner that art expressed the spirit of the people; there was no Englishness in English art. He was never drawn to an intellectual approach to culture promulgated by his mentor, Saxl, and giants like E. H. Gombrich at the Warburg Institute. His discovery that the Coronation of the Virgin image, best known from 13th-century French sculpture and Roman church mosaics, had its earliest development in England, for example, in a capital of ca.1130 at Reading Abbey.
[complete bibliography:] “Publications of George Zarnecki.” Romanesque and Gothic: Essays for George Zarnecki. Neil Stratford, ed. Wolfeboro, NH: Boydell Press, 1987, unpaginated; [dissertation:] Regional Schools of English Sculpture in the Twelfth Century. Ph.D., Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, 1950, published in an altered for as, English Romanesque Sculpture, 1066-1140. London: A. Tiranti, 1951, and Later English Romanesque Sculpture, 1140-1210. London: A. Tiranti, 1953; English Romanesque Lead Sculpture: Lead Fonts of the Twelfth Century. New York: Philosophical Library, 1957; The Early Sculpture of Ely Cathedral. London: A. Tiranti. 1958; and Grivot, Denis. Gislebertus: Sculptor of Autun. New York: Orion Press, 1961; The Monastic Achievement. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1972; Romanesque Art. New York: Universe Books, 1971; Art of the Medieval World: Architecture, Sculpture, Painting, the Sacred Arts. New York: H. N. Abrams, 1975.
“Forward.” Romanesque and Gothic: essays for George Zarnecki. Neil Stratford, ed. Wolfeboro, NH: Boydell Press, 1987, vol. 1, unpaginated; [obituaries:] Quaife, Patricia. “Professor George Zarnecki.” Times (London), September 27, 2008 p..75; “George Zarnecki Authority on Romanesque art who proved an influential administrator as deputy director of the Courtauld.” Daily Telegraph (London), September 18, 2008 p. 31; Kauffmann, Michael. “George Zarnecki, Former deputy director of the Courtauld Institute of Art and leading scholar of Romanesque sculpture.” Independent (London), September 16, 2008 p. 32; “Professor George Zarnecki.” Times (London), September 13, 2008 p. 71; Mullaly, Terence. “George Zarnecki: Eminent art historian who helped the Courtauld survive the Blunt scandal.” Guardian (London) September 11, 2008
Courtauld Institute of Art medievalist, particularly English Romanesque. Zarnecki’s father, Zygmunt Zarnecki, was a Polish Jew converted to Catholicism working as a civil engineer in Russia at the time of Zarnecki’s birth; his mother was Russian,
Full Name: Zani, Pietro
Gender: male
Date Born: 1748
Date Died: c. 1821
Home Country/ies: Italy
Wrote Enciclopedia metodica critico-ragionata delle belle arti, 1817-24.
Enciclopedia metodica critico-ragionata delle belle arti, dell’ abate D. Pietro Zani, Fidentino. 2 parts in 9 vols. Parma: Tip. ducale, 1817-24.
Wrote Enciclopedia metodica critico-ragionata delle belle arti, 1817-24.
Full Name: Zanetti, Antonio Maria Alessandro
Other Names:
Gender: male
Date Born: 1706
Date Died: 1778
Place Born: Venice, Veneto, Italy
Place Died: Venice, Veneto, Italy
Home Country/ies: Italy
Subject Area(s): Ancient Italian, Early Western World, Mediterranean (Early Western World), painting (visual works), Venetian (Republic, culture or style), and Viennese
Institution(s): Biblioteca Marciana
Historian of Venetian painting. Zanetti began as a draftsman and artist, collaborating with his cousin, also called Anton Maria Zanetti, in illustrations for books. In 1733 he adapted Marco Boschini pictorial analysis of Venitian painting, Le ricche minere della pittura veneziana, (1674) into a new critical work, his Descrizione di tutte le pubbliche pitture della città di Venezia e isole circonvicine. Emboldened by the success of this early work, he set about writing a large-scale account of the Venetian school, Della pittura veneziana e delle opere pubbliche de’ veneziani maestri (1771). Zanetti conceived of art history through an Enlightenment attitude. Descrizione begins with the “Primitives” of Italian art, moving quickly to the Renaissance artists of Venice. He disparaged Mannerism, contrasting it to Venetian painting, and characterizing the former as leading him to the excesses of the baroque. Zanetti was much admired by later art historians, particularly Luigi Antonio Lanzi who characterized Zanetti’s text balanced and his historiography sound. For most of his life, from 1737 onward, he was librarian of the Biblioteca Marciana, the library of S Marco in Venice.
Della pittura Veneziana e delle opere pubbliche de’ Veneziani Maestri libri V. Venice: S. Benedetto, 1771; Descrizione di tutte le pubbliche pitture della città di Venezia. Venice: Presso P. Bassaglia, 1733.
The Dictionary of Art
Contributors: Lee Sorensen
Historian of Venetian painting. Zanetti began as a draftsman and artist, collaborating with his cousin, also called Anton Maria Zanetti, in illustrations for books. In 1733 he adapted Marco Boschini pictorial analysis of V