Full Name: Schmidt, Gerhard
Gender: male
Date Born: 11 May 1924
Date Died: 03 April 2010
Place Born: Vienna, Vienna state, Austria
Place Died: Vienna, Vienna state, Austria
Home Country/ies: Austria
Subject Area(s): Medieval (European)
Institution(s): Universität Wien
Overview
Professor of art history, University of Vienna. Schmidt parents were a doctor (father) and a school teacher (mother). He served the Nazi Reich as a soldier in the Second World war and was interned in an American POW camp. Released after the war, he entered the University in Vienna to study medicine. The next year, 1947, he switched to art history. His teachers included Wladimir Sas-Zaloziecki and Karl Maria Swoboda, both Max Dvořák-trained, Otto Demus and Fritz Novotny. He spent a summer at the Harvard University summer school in Salzburg and then a scholarship to France. He received his doctorate in art history in 1951, his dissertation topic was on French relief sculpture. His habilitation followed in 1959 with the title Die Armenbibeln des XIV. Jahrhunderts (Armenian Bibles of the Fourteenth Century). Schmidt was appointed ordentlich Professor in 1962. He was elected a corresponding member of the philosphical-historical division of the Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften in 1972. He held the He was Slade professorship of Fine Art at the University of Cambridge between 1981 and 1982. Schmidt was granted emeritus status in 1992. At his 2010 death he was buried in the Heiligenstädter Friedhof in Vienna. His students include Alessandra Comini.
Contributors: Lee Sorensen