Vienna-School art historian, Netherlandish specialist and Director of the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. Baldass studied in Graz, Halle (under Adolph Goldschmidt) and Munich before gaining his degree at the University in Vienna. His thesis, written under Max Dvořák and accepted in 1911, was on portraiture of the Emperor Maximilian. Baldass joined the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna the same year, eventually being appointed curator in 1918. He married Paula Wagner, granddaughter of the architect Otto Wagner (1841-1918).

Museum curator; author of first modern comprehensive catalog of prints, Le Peintre-graveur. Bartsch was the son of a court official of Prince Starhemberg of Austria. He studied academic subjects at the University in Vienna and then drawing and engraving at Viennese Academy of Arts (Kupferstecherakademie) under Jacob Schmuzer (1733-1811). From 1777-1781 he worked in the Imperial Library, cataloging books. Between 1783-4 he was sent to Paris with the print collection's registrar, Paul Strattmann, to acquire the print collection of the Johann Anton de Peters (1725-1795).

Author of a history of Greek and Roman artists. Bartsch was the son of the more famous, Adam von Bartsch. From 1814 onwards he assisted his father in the imperial library collection of prints. In 1818 he published a catalog of his father's collection, the Catalogue des estampes de J. Adam de Bartsch. He succeeded his father at the imperial print collection in 1827. In 1835 Bartsch issued a history of artists of the classical Greek and Roman era, Chronologie der griechischen und römischen Künstler. Like his father, too, he was an etcher.

Early collector of Egon Schiele, wrote a memoir of the artist. Benesch was a railroad administrator in Vienna for the southern line. Although the position was not a particularly lucrative one, he collected contemporary Austrian art. Early on he befriended the Austrian expressionist artist Egon Schiele and became one of his earliest patrons. Schiele painted a combined portrait of him and his son in 1913 (Doppelbildnis H. Benesch und Sohn, Neue Galerie der Stadt Linz, Wolfgang Gurlitt Museum, Inventory 12).

Rembrandt scholar and director of the Albertina 1947-61. Benesch's father was the art collector Heinrich Benesch. Among the elder Benesch's friends was the Austrian Expressionist Egon Schiele. A double portrait of father and son, painted by Schiele in 1913, is owned by the Wolfgang-Gurlitt-Museum in Linz, Austria. The younger Benesch studied art history at the University of Vienna and a semester in Stockholm under Johnny Roosval. Around 1919 he assisted Frederick Antal in organizing the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest.

Classicist art historian. Benndorf studied under the archaeologist/philologist Friedrich Gottlieb Welcker (1784-1868), the pottery scholar Otto Jahn and the classicist Friedrich Ritschl (1806-1876) at Bonn. He wrote his habilitationschrift in 1868 under Friedrich Wieseler (1811-1892) in Göttingen. During a brief position teaching at Schulpforte, Germany, his pupils included the young Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900).

Museum director of Austrian art museums. Ernst Heinrich Buschbeck was born to Helene (née Marbach) and Alfred Buschbeck, the father from a prestigious military family. Buschbeck graduated from the Schottengymnasium in Vienna and after a compulsory year of military service 1907-1908, he studied philosophy and jurisprudence at Lausanne and Vienna.  By 1910 he had switched to history and art history, attending lectures in the universities of Berlin (under Heinrich Wölfflin), Halle and Vienna.

Director of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1949-1967. d'Harnoncourt was born into a wealthy Viennese family, Count Hubert and Julie Mittrowsky d'Harnoncourt. The family moved to Graz, where he initially intended on a career as a chemist, studying at the university in Graz. He moved to the Technische Hochschule in Vienna in 1922, writing a thesis on creosote content in the coal of Yugoslavia, but without graduating. When the family fortuned declined after World War I, d'Harnoncourt moved to Mexico in 1925 to seek employment as a chemist.

University of Vienna Byzantinist and San Marco scholar. Demus's father, Carl Demus, was a physician. His father was killed early during the First World War and the younger Demus partially supported of his family as an adolescent. He entered the University of Vienna in 1921 during the time of the historic (and bitter) split between the faculty of Josef Rudolf Thomas Strzygowski, and Julius Alwin von Schlosser. The rivalry between these two men was such that studying with both was impossible.

Byzantinist, Josef Rudolf Thomas Strzygowski student and professor at Bryn Mawr College, 1939-1943. 1919 Lecturer, University of Vienna; 1926-1939 professor at Bryn Mawr; 1939-1943 returned to Vienna; Associate Professor, 1943-1949 first professor of art history in Ankara. Together with Curt Glaser and Ernst Grosse, Diez established the theoretic foundation for Asian art in the German-speaking world (Metzler).

Specialist in ancient Greek and Roman art, particularly sculpture and bronze statuary. Curator of varying rank at the Kunsthistorischen Museums, Vienna, beginning in 1915, and director of the Antiquities Collection, 1935-1952. Professor of Classical Archaeology at the University of Vienna (1953-1961), and director of the österreichische archäologische Institut (Austrian Archaeological Institute, or öAI) from 1953 to 1969.

Director of the Picture Gallery of the Academy of Fine Arts (Akademie der Bildenden Künste) 1926-29, 33-65, Vienna. He was born in Sedlitz, Bohemia, which is present-day Sedlice, Czech Republic. Eigenberger studied art history at the universities of Prague, Munich and Göttingen, receiveing his Ph.D., in 1913 in Berlin. He served in the First World War (1915-16). After working in the cultural monuments division of the Austrian Ministry of Culture, he was curator (Kustos) at the Picture Gallery of the Academy of Fine Arts in 1922. He was made director in 1926.

Early academic art historian; founder and first chair of art history (Ordinarius) at the University of Vienna (1851) and founder of the österreiches Museum für Kunst und Industrie. Eitelberger was the son of an Austrian military officer. He was born in Olmütz, Olomouc, Moravia, which is present-day Olomouc, Czech Republic. He studied law in Olmütz in 1832 before changing to Romance philology in which he gained his degree under Julius von Ficker (1826-1902). He lectured in philology between 1839-1848 at the University in Vienna.

Historian of useful arts; museum director. Falke was the son of the art historian Jakob Falke. He studied art history and archeology at the University of Vienna beginning in 1881. He became a member of the Burschenschaft Libertas Wien (fraternity) and the Institut für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung, IÖGF (Austrian Institute for Historical Research). Like his father, he held a lifelong interest in the art of useful objects.

Professor of Italian Renaissance art. The son of a Jewish craftsman, Fehl grew up in Vienna. After the annexation of Austria, Fehl fled first to England and then, in July 1940, to the United States. He studied painting at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, but volunteered for war service. Fehl was an interrogator for the United States Army at the Nuremberg Trials 1946-47. He returned to study art history with Ulrich Middeldorf at the University of Chicago.

Austrian Architect and art historian who produced the first universal history of architecture. Fischer was born in Graz, Austria, in 1656 to parents from notable local families. His father, Johann Baptist Fischer, was a provincial sculptor who had contributed to a number of local buildings in Graz including the Landhaus — the seat of the Styrian local government — and the nearby castle of the Eggenberg family. It was in his father’s workshop that Johann Bernhard received his early training as a sculptor.

Scholar of Renaissance and Baroque art in Austria and Italy, Nazi collaborator during World War II. Frey studied (practicing) architecture at the Technische Hochschule in Vienna. In 1911, the second-Vienna School art historian Max Dvořák took him as his assistant in the Austrian monument conservation bureau. Dvořák encourage Frey to study art history, and Frey wrote his dissertation in 1915 (under Dvořák) on Bramante's plan for St. Peter's.

Scholar of Romanesque art, selected works of art for Nazi confiscation to the Reich. Frodl received his Ph. D. in 1930 from the University at Graz where he studied under Hermann Egger and the classical art historian Rudolf Heberdey. He became a privatdozent studying architectural conservation at the Technical Hochschule, Graz. In 1936 he was appointed Head of Carinthian Monuments and Fine Arts Office, a unit for the conservation of buildings [Landeskonservator für Kärnten im Klagenfurt].

Private scholar, art dealer, and art critic; specialist in Italian paintings and drawings, especially Renaissance and Baroque; trained under the Vienna School scholars. Frohlich-Bume was born in Vienna, Austria-Hungary which is present day Vienna, Austria to Ernst Bum, a lawyer and publisher, and an unknown mother. She attended a private girls’ school in Vienna and completed her Abitur in 1906 at the Ersten Staatsgymnasium in Graz.

Franz Wickhoff student, Director of the Gemäldegalerie, Vienna, 1916-31, fled Nazis 1938 to London, later settled in California. Ludwig Burchard edited his collected writings. Like many Gründerzeit art historians, Glück lionized Wilhelm Bode as the "great man" of art history.

Educated by the second "Vienna School" of art historians, Julius Alwin von Schlosser was possibibly his diss advisor. 1938 emmigrated to London, 1938-73 co-founder, director, designer and editor of the Phaidon Press, London. His papers are housed at the Getty Center, Malibu, CA.

University of London professor of art history, champion of psychological-approach to art. Gombrich grew up within one of the elite cultural circles of Vienna. His father, Karl Gombrich (1874-1950), was the vice-president of the Disciplinary Council of the Austrian Bar, and his mother, Leonie Hock (Gombrich) (1873-1968), was a pianist who had studied under the composer Anton Bruckner (1824-1896) and taught piano to Gustav Mahler's sister. Gombrich himself was an accomplished cellist. The family had originally been Jewish but converted to Lutheranism at the turn of the 20th century.

Precursor to the (first) Vienna school of art history. Heider gained his law degree in Vienna. In 1842 he became an adjunct (assistant) in the library of the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts (Wiener Akademie der bildenden Künste). He joined the Ministry of Education (Ministerium für Kultus und Unterricht) in 1850, and remained there until 1880. He began his art-history writing with über Tiersymbolik (On Animal Symbolism) in 1849. In 1855 he published a study of Schöngraben church outside Vienna. Part of the appeal of the church was its decaying art work.

Private scholar; editorial Secretary and Assistant Editor of the The Burlington Magazine, 1938-1950. Hoffmann was the daughter of the writer and Czech diplomat Camill (or Kamil) Hoffmann (1878-144) and his wife, Irma Oplatka (Hoffmann) (1883-1944). Irma’s father was an art writer and a friend of the Austrian Expressionist artist Oskar Kokoschka. After attending elementary school in the suburban town of Hellerau bei Dresden, she graduated from the Auguste Victoria Girls' School in Berlin in 1928.

Interdisciplinary historian of 19th- and 20th-century art, museum director. Hofmann was the son of Leopold Hofmann and Anna Visvader (Hofmann). He studied art history in Paris and Vienna, graduating from the University of Vienna. Between 1950-55, he worked as an assistant curator of the Albertina Museum in Vienna. In 1957 Hofmann took on fellow Vienna-school art historian Hans Sedlmayr in his review of Sedlmayr's book Verlust der Mitte.