Walter Friedländer

Walter Ferdinand Friedlaender ( born March 10, 1873 in Glogau, † September 6, 1966 in New York ) was a German art historian. He emigrated to the USA in 1933 and taught at New York University.

Life and work

Walter Friedlaender was born the son of Sigismund Friedlaender and Anna Joachimsthal. Because his parents died early, he moved with an older sister to Berlin. He studied Sanskrit at the University of Berlin and in 1898 received his doctorate. In a subsequent postdoctoral fellowship at the British Museum in London, he discovered his interest in art history. After his return to Berlin, he studied art history at the University of Heinrich Wölfflin. From 1907 to 1911 he worked at the Prussian Historical Institute in Rome. In 1912 he published a study on the frescoes by Federico Barocci, 1914 he published his book on Nicolas Poussin. In the same year he married Emma Cardin and was a lecturer at the Institute of Wilhelm Vöge at the University of Freiburg. In 1921 he was appointed extraordinary professor. He taught there until 1933 he is already 60 years old, was dismissed on the basis of the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service. Important work on the mannerism appeared in 1925 and 1930, of the Warburg Library published .. Among his students were also Erwin Panofsky and Hanns Swarzenski, in exile in New York Robert Goldwater.

Friedlaender emigrate to the U.S., where he had a temporary job at the University of Pennsylvania in 1935, and finally found a steady job at the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University with the help of Panofsky. Here he taught and conducted research continues to Poussin ( Drawings of Nicolas Poussin, three volumes, 1939-55 ), Mannerism in art ( Mannerism and Anti- Mannerism in Italian Painting, 1957) and the art of the 16th and 17th centuries ( Caravaggio Studies, 1955). Since 1939 he was co-editor of the published by the College Art Association The Art Bulletin.

Writings (selection )

• Drawings of Nicolas Poussin. 3 volumes, 1939-55.
• Anthony Blunt: Drawings of Nicolas Poussin. Catalogue Raisonne. Vol 5 ( Studies of the Warburg Institute ), London 1974, ISBN 978-0-85481-048-2.
• Caravaggio Studies, 1955.
• Mannerism and Anti- Mannerism in Italian Painting ( Interpretations in Art ). Columbia University Press, New York 1957. Reprint 1990, ISBN 978-0-231-02024-4.