Franz Wickhoff
Franz Wickhoff (born May 7, 1853 in Steyr , Upper Austria ; † April 6, 1909 in Venice ) was an Austrian art historian and well-known representative of the Vienna School of Art History .
Life
Wickhoff came from a respected Upper Austrian bourgeois family. He studied art history at the University of Vienna under Rudolf Eitelberger and Moriz Thausing and graduated from the Institute for Austrian Historical Research from 1877–79, where he was trained in philological and critical source research . He was also deeply impressed by classical archeology . In 1880 he received his doctorate with a dissertation on Dürer's drawing after antiquity . From 1879 to 1895 he was curator of the textile collection at the Austrian Museum for Art and Industry . In 1882 he was appointed private lecturer , in 1885 associate professor and in 1891 professor for art history at the University of Vienna. Impaired for many years by a persistent illness, Wickhoff died unexpectedly in 1909 during a stay in Venice and was buried there on the Cimitero San Michele .
In 1921, in Vienna Rudolfsheim-Fünfhaus (15th district), Wickhoffgasse was named after him. There is a plaque designed by Michael Blümelhuber on the house where he was born .
Act
One of Wickhoff's main concerns was to fight against amateurism and aesthetic enthusiasm and to place the discipline of art history on an exact scientific basis. The so-called “experimental method” of the Italian physician, senator and art connoisseur Giovanni Morelli seemed exemplary for him . He had taken the view that the formation of inconspicuous physiognomic details in a painting, such as noses, ears, lips or fingers, could determine the characteristic handwriting of the painter beyond any doubt. In fact, a number of incorrect attributions could be corrected in this way. Although this procedure was of course only of limited validity, it nevertheless contained pioneering approaches to an empirical art study . Wickhoff emphatically supported Morelli's method and expanded it into a comparative style analysis.
In addition to the strictly methodical investigation of the work of art itself, it was equally important for Wickhoff to take into account its position in the context of intellectual and cultural history. This is expressed in numerous essays, especially on Renaissance art , which also reflect his preference for the Italian art landscapes. In doing so, he was fundamentally interested in presenting all artistic creation in a global development-historical context, as he did programmatically in 1898 in a study on the historical uniformity of the entire development of art . His main work on the Viennese Genesis - an early Christian code in the possession of the Austrian National Library - which he published in 1895 together with the classical philologist and later Minister of Education Wilhelm von Hartel , also results from this cross-epoch perspective . In comparison with modern impressionism , Wickhoff understood the illusionistic style in the illustrations of the early Christian purple manuscript as a creative achievement. At the same time as Alois Riegl , Wickhoff initiated a re-evaluation of late antique art, which until then had been considered a sign of decay.
Wickhoff demonstrated a profound understanding of contemporary art, in contrast to the majority of his academic colleagues, when he publicly advocated Gustav Klimt in 1900 , whose faculty pictures intended for the ballroom of the University of Vienna caused a sensational scandal and were never installed at their destination.
Wickhoff was also a talented landscape painter himself; some smaller pictures are now in his estate at the Institute for Art History at the University of Vienna. In addition, he had a strong literary bias. Among other things, he dared to try to complete Goethe's play fragment Pandora . A projected history of naturalism in the visual arts would certainly have been more important, but it was no longer carried out.
With his uncompromising methodology, Wickhoff became the actual founder of the Vienna School of Art History . Numerous well-known scholars emerged from his institute, including Max Dvořák , Hans Tietze and Julius von Schlosser . His scientific opinion is documented by the review organ Kunstgeschichtliche Werbung, founded in 1904 . The most important result of his own research was a catalog of the Italian drawings in the Albertina Graphic Collection from 1891–92 . The descriptive index of illuminated manuscripts in Austria , the first and second volumes of which he was able to publish himself in 1905 , also goes back to Wickhoff's initiative . A planned catalog raisonné of Raphael's drawings no longer came about.
Unpublished sources
- Extensive estate of letters, manuscripts and notes as well as 3 paintings at the Institute for Art History at the University of Vienna
Works (selection)
- The Italian hand drawings of the Albertina , in: Yearbook of the Art History Collections of the Most High Imperial House, 12, 1891 and 13, 1892
- The Vienna Genesis , ed. by Wilhelm von Hartel and Franz Wickhoff, in: Yearbook of the Art History Collections of the Very Highest Imperial House, 15/16, 1895; Neudr. Graz 1970
- On the historical uniformity of the entire development of art , in: Festival for Büdinger, Innsbruck 1898
- Art history advertisements , ed. by Franz Wickhoff, Innsbruck 1904–1909
- Descriptive directory of the illuminated manuscripts in Austria , 2 vols., Leipzig 1905
- The writings of Franz Wickhoff , ed. by Max Dvořák, 2 vols., Berlin 1912–1913
Literature (selection)
- Fritz Fellner , Doris A. Corradini (Ed.): Austrian History in the 20th Century. A biographical-bibliographical lexicon (= publications of the Commission for Modern History of Austria. Vol. 99). Böhlau, Vienna et al. 2006, ISBN 3-205-77476-0 , p. 451 f.
- Ioli Kalavrezou-Maxeiner: Franz Wickhoff - Art History as Science , in: Akten des XXV. International Congress for Art History, 1, Vienna 1983
- Ulrich Rehm: How much time do the pictures have? Franz Wickhoff and art historical narrative research , in: Vienna School - Memories and Perspectives. Vienna Yearbook for Art History, 53, 2004
- Julius von Schlosser: The Vienna School of Art History , in: Communications of the Austrian Institute for Historical Research, Erg.Bd. 13/2, Innsbruck 1934
- Vasiliki Tsamakda : Franz Wickhoff . In: Stefan Heid , Martin Dennert (Hrsg.): Personal Lexicon for Christian Archeology. Researchers and personalities from the 16th to the 21st century . Schnell & Steiner, Regensburg 2012, ISBN 978-3-7954-2620-0 , Vol. 2, pp. 1316-1317.
Web links
- Literature by and about Franz Wickhoff in the catalog of the German National Library
- Entry on Franz Wickhoff in the Austria Forum (in the AEIOU Austria Lexicon )
Individual evidence
Former chair (“Art History II”): Rudolf Eitelberger (1852–1885) | Alois Riegl (1897–1905) | Max Dvořák (1909–1921) | Julius von Schlosser (from 1922) | Hans Sedlmayr (from 1936) | Karl M. Swoboda (from 1946) | Otto Pächt (from 1963) | Hermann Fillitz (from 1974) | Hellmut Lorenz (from 1997) | Sebastian Schütze (from 2009)
Later chair (“Art History I”): Moritz Thausing (1873–1884) | Franz Wickhoff (1885–1909) | Josef Strzygowski (1909–1933) | Otto Demus (from 1963) | Günther Heinz (from 1976) | Friedrich Teja Bach (from 1994) | Sebastian Egenhofer (from 2016)
Further chairs and university professors: Otto Benesch (from 1948) | Fritz Novotny (from 1948) | Renate Wagner-Rieger (from 1964) | Gerhard Schmidt (from 1964) | Helmut Buschhausen (from 1975) | Artur Rosenauer (from 1976) | Deborah Klimburg-Salter (from 1996) | Michael Viktor Schwarz (from 1998) | Lioba Theis (from 2005) | Raphael Rosenberg (from 2009) | Julia Gelshorn (2010–2011) | Sebastian Egenhofer (2012–2013) | Markus Ritter (from 2012) | Noit Banai (from 2014) | Lukas Nickel (from 2016)
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Wickhoff, Franz |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Austrian art historian |
| DATE OF BIRTH | May 7, 1853 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Steyr , Upper Austria |
| DATE OF DEATH | April 6, 1909 |
| Place of death | Venice |