Gombrich art history

Full Name: Wölfflin, Heinrich

Other Names:

Gender: male

Date Born: 21 June 1864

Date Died: 19 July 1945

Place Born: Winterthur, Zürich, Switzerland

Place Died: Zürich, Switzerland

Home Country/ies: Switzerland

Subject Area(s): methodology


Overview

Widely influential professor of art history, major exponent of formalist methodology. Wölfflin was the son of a Swiss classics scholar Eduard von Wölfflin (1831-1908) and Bertha Troll-Greuter (Wölfflin) (1839-1911). He initially studied philosophy at the university in Basel under Johannes Volkelt (1848-1930), but the lectures of cultural historian Jacob Burckhardt developed in him an enthusiasm for art history. Wölfflin continued study in philosophy at Berlin under the eminent Wilhelm Dilthey (1833-1911), whose work exerted a strong influence on Wölfflin his whole life. He moved to Munich, where his father had an appointment, continuing to study philosophy and art history. In Munich, Wölfflin wrote his dissertation, Prolegomena zu einer Psychologie der Architektur in 1886, under Enrico Brunn. Even in this e

Heinrich Wölfflin

Swiss German art historian

Heinrich Wölfflin (German:[ˈhaɪnʁɪçˈvœlflɪn]; 21 June 1864 – 19 July 1945) was a Swiss art historian, esthetician and educator, whose objective classifying principles ("painterly" vs. "linear" and the like) were influential in the development of formal analysis in art history in the early 20th century.[1] He taught at Basel, Berlin and Munich in the generation that saw German art history's rise to pre-eminence. His three most important books, still consulted, are Renaissance und Barock (1888), Die Klassische Kunst (1898, "Classic Art"), and Kunstgeschichtliche Grundbegriffe (1915, "Principles of Art History").[2]

Wölfflin taught at Berlin University from 1901 to 1912, at Munich University from 1912 to 1924, and at University of Zurich from 1924 until his retirement.[3]

Origins and career

Wölfflin was born in Winterthur, Switzerland. His father, Eduard Wölfflin, was a professor of classical philology who taught at the Munich university and helped to found and organize the Thes

Principles of Art History

Principles of Art History by Heinrich Wölfflin (1864–1945), a revolutionary attempt to construct a science of art through the study of the development of style, has been a foundational work of formalist art history since it was first published in 1915. At once systematic and subjective, and remarkable for its compelling descriptions of works of art, Wölfflin’s text has endured as an accessible yet rigorous approach to the study of style. Although Wölfflin applied his analysis to objects of early modern European art, Principles of Art History has been a fixture in the theoretical and methodological debates of the discipline of art history and has found a global audience.
 
With translations in twenty-four languages and many reprints, Wölfflin’s work may be the most widely read and translated book of art history ever. This new English translation, appearing one hundred years after the original publication, returns readers to Wölfflin’s 1915 text and images. It also includes the first English tra

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