Rudolf Wittkower

Rudolf Wittkower ( born June 22, 1901 in Berlin, † October 11, 1971 in New York City ) was a British- American art historian Aby Warburg within and Erwin Panofsky.

Life

Wittkowers father Henry Wittkower was a Brit who lived in Germany. He was born in Berlin. First, he spent a year studying architecture in Berlin before he decided to study art history at Henry Wölfflin in Munich. However Wittkower did not get along with Wölfflin and returned to Berlin to study with Adolph Goldschmidt. Attending a seminar in which orientalist and archaeologist Ernst Herzfeld sparked his interest in the arts of the Orient. Wittkowers dissertation was about Domenico Morone.

In 1923 he went as assistant to Ernst Steinman to Rome to assist him in the completion of Michelangelo bibliography. He remained there until 1927 and wrote several articles on the side for the General lexicon of visual artists. In Italy he met Aby Warburg who invited him to Hamburg for review of the Warburg 's library. The local visit in 1928 was the beginning of a lifelong friendship with Erwin Panofsky, who won it for the iconology. Wittkower worked subsequently at the University of Berlin and from 1932 at the University of Cologne.

After he was dismissed in 1933 after the handover of power to the Nazis for racist reasons, he went to London and was employed at the Warburg Institute. Until 1956 he worked here, and in 1949 appeared with Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism his main work. Alongside a professor at the Slade School of Art he was offered, which consisted mainly in the Supervise dissertations.

1954 Wittkower worked for a year as a visiting professor at Harvard University. Two years later he moved to the U.S. and became a professor in the Department of Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University. Appeared in 1958 Art and Architecture in Italy: 1600-1750, his best-selling book, which has also been awarded several prizes. In 1969 he went as Avalon Foundation Professor Emeritus of Art History in retirement and returned to England. There he works in Cambridge until his death in 1971 continues.

Writings (selection )

• Papers in the Journal of the Warburg Institute in 1937
• Marco Polo and the pictorial tradition of the novels of the east. In: Étienne Balazs (ed.): Oriente Poliano. Instituto Italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Orienta, Rome 1957.

• Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism. Academy Editions, London, 1988, ISBN 0-85670-875-5 (EA London 1949). Basics of Architecture in the Age of Humanism. 2nd edition Dtv, Munich 1990, ISBN 3-423-04412-8.

• Born under Saturn. The character and conduct of artists. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London 1963. Artists, social outcasts. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1965.