Tutor and restorer. Mühsam was born 1889 to Isidor Freymark (d. 1912), a banker, and Lina Hirschfeld (d. 1922), who were both Jewish. She attended private school in her youth, and in 1911 married Kurt Mühsam (1882–1931), a lawyer, writer, journalist, editor-in-chief, and film critic. Before college, Mühsam worked as a housewife and mother, giving piano lessons and writing occasional music criticism. From 1929 to 1936, she studied archaeology and art history in Berlin under Gerhart Rodenwaldt, interrupted by the death of her husband in 1931.

His book, The American Vignola (4th ed., 1905) was one of the early required texts to be listed in the course catalog for the art history classes of Princeton University.

Scholar of Italian baroque art. Seminal figure for the generation of art historians who matured during the second half of the 20th century. Because Wittkower's father, Henry Wittkower (1865-1942), was British, the younger Wittkower held British citizenship his whole life despite having been born and raised in Germany. His mother was a German, Gertrude Ansbach (Wittkower) (1876-1965).