Eugène Müntz

Eugène Muntz ( born June 11, 1845 in Soultz -sous -Forêts in Mulhouse, Alsace, † 30 October 1902 in Paris) was a French art historian. He was a professor and librarian at the École des Beaux -Arts in Paris.

Life

Müntz began first in Paris to study law, but then turned the art criticism and art history. He was first attracted by articles in the Revue Alsacienne. From 1875 studied at the École française founded two years earlier de Rome at Albert Dumont. He acquired an extensive knowledge of Italian art and architecture in the Vatican archives and view on site in Rome. His first work was in 1875 devoted to the role of the popes in the promotion of art in the Renaissance. In 1876 he was librarian and archivist at the Ecole des Beaux -Arts in Paris. 1885 to 1892, he became also the chair of aesthetics by Hippolyte Taine.

He dealt in particular with the Italian Renaissance, among other things, he wrote a biography of Raphael and Leonardo da Vinci. Recognition he found particularly through his biography and Raphael in France by its overall presentation of the art of the Renaissance (1888-1894), focusing his studies in Rome and Florence, the High Renaissance was. He also published on Roman, and early Christian art and contemporary art, on the collections of the Medici Popes in Avignon.

His writings have mainly descriptive and documentary character, based on a thorough knowledge of the available documents. In a paper in 1884 about Raphael in art history and art criticism, he opposed the trend toward specialized art connoisseurship, for at that time Giovanni Morelli stood. He was also critical of the positivist access his colleagues at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts Hippolyte Taine. In Italy undertook at the same time Gaetano Milanesi similar pioneering work on historical sources on the art history of the Renaissance. Müntz tried to connect the different areas of the arts and crafts together and treated as well as furniture, ceramics, wood carvings and tapestries. Most recently, he dealt starting with France with the influence of the Italian Renaissance in the rest of Europe. His death prevented further planned studies here.

In 1888, Muntz was a corresponding member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences.

Writings

• Notes sur les mosaïques de l' Italie, 1874-92
• Les arts à la cour des papes pendant le XVe et le XVIe siècle, 4 volumes, 1878-1898
• Les précurseurs de la Renaissance, 1881
• Raphael, sa vie, son oeuvre et son temps, 1881, 2nd edition 1886
• Histoire de la tapestry, 1882
• Etudes sur l' histoire de la peinture et de l' iconographie chrétiennes, 1882
• Les Historiens et les critiques de Raphael, 1884
• Histoire de l'art pendant la Renaissance, 3 volumes, 1888-1894, Volume 1: Primitifs, 1888; Volume 2: L'Age d'Or, 1891, Volume 3: La Fin de la Renaissance, 1895
• Léonard da Vinci, l'artiste, le penseur, le savant, 1899
• Etudes sur le Moyen iconographiques et archéologiques Age, 1888
• Donatello, 1885
• Le Palais des papes à Avignon ", 1886-1892
• With P. Fabre, " La Bibliothèque du Vatican au XVIe siècle, 1887
• Collections of Médicis au XVe siècle, 1887
• Antiques de Rome au XIVe, XVe et XVIe siècles, 1887
• Florence et la Toscane, 1897
• La Tiare Pontifical you VIIIe siècle au XVIe siècle, 1897
• La Renaissance en Italie et en France à l' époque de Charles VIII, 1885
• With Émile Molinier: Le Château de Fontainebleau XVIè au siècle, 1886