Michael Baxandall

Michael David Kighly Baxandall ( born August 18, 1933, Cardiff, † 12 August 2008) was a British art historian and professor at the Warburg and Courtauld Institute, University of London and at the University of California, Berkeley.

Life

Baxandall was the son of David Baxandall, a museum curator who was for a time director of the National Gallery of Scotland. He attended Manchester Grammar School and later studied at FR Leavis English Literature at Downing College, Cambridge. He spent a year at the University of Pavia (1955-1956), then taught at the International School in St. Gallen in Switzerland ( 1956-1957 ). Most recently, he went to the University of Munich to listen to lectures there by the art historian Hans Sedlmayr. He also worked at the Central Institute for Art History. He returned in 1958 returned to London, where a long professional relationship with the Warburg Institute began. First he took care of the "Photographic Collection". There he met Kay Simon, whom he married in 1963.

Baxandall was 1974 Slade Professor of Fine Art at Oxford University and winner of the Aby M. Warburg Prize 1988. Moreover, he was awarded for his work " The Limewood Sculptors Of Renaissance Germany" (1980, German " The art of the sculptor " ) the Mitchell prize. In 1988 he was MacArthur Fellow.

Work

Baxandall is considered one of the most important researchers sculpture of southern Germany in the 15th century., He used the term " florid " sculpture (from the Latin flora, fauna, flower). Another focus of his research was the Italian Renaissance. In her painting, he developed the thesis that images must be read as documents of their time.

" An old picture documented a visual action. One must learn to read it, just as one must learn to read a text from a different culture, even if one knows the language in a certain sense. Language and pictorial representation are convention -bound activities "

Works (selection)

  • The art of the carver. Tilman Riemenschneider, Veit Stoss & their contemporaries, Beck, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-406-52368-4
  • Holes in the light. The shadow and the Enlightenment, Fink, Munich, 1998, ISBN 3-7705-3100-0
  • ( with Svetlana Alpers ) Tiepolo and the intelligence of the painting, Reimer, Berlin 1996, ISBN 3-496-01148-3
  • Causes of images. About the historical explanation of the art, Reimer, Berlin 1990, ISBN 3-496-01072- X
  • The reality of the images. Painting and Experience in Renaissance Italy, Wagenbach, Berlin 1990, ISBN 3-8031-3601-6
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