Gerhard Wolf (art historian)

Gerhard Wolf (born November 25, 1952 in Karlsruhe ) is a German art historian . He is director at the Art History Institute in Florence - Max Planck Institute and honorary professor at the Humboldt University in Berlin . From 2013 to 2019 he was a member of the Scientific Committee of the Science Council .

biography

Gerhard Wolf studied art history, Christian archeology and philosophy at the University of Heidelberg , where he was in 1989 with the work Salus Populi Romani - The history of Roman cult images in the Middle Ages doctorate . In 1995 he completed his habilitation at the Free University of Berlin with the script Veil and Mirror - Traditions of the Image of Christ and the Image Concepts of the Renaissance . He was Directeur d'études invité at EHESS in Paris (1997) and held the Richard Krautheimer Professorship at the Bibliotheca Hertziana (2001/02). From 1998 to 2003 he was Professor of Art History at the University of Trier . Visiting professorships led him a. a. to the Humboldt University of Berlin (1994/95), to the University of Vienna (1996/97), Basel (2000/01), Buenos Aires (2002) and the UNAM in Mexico City (2003), to the Hebrew University in Jerusalem (2004), after Harvard (2008) and to the University of Chicago (2009), in 2009 to the Università della Svizzera Italiana in Lugano, in autumn 2011 to the Boğaziçi University in Istanbul and in spring 2013 to the Jawaharlal Nehru University , Delhi. Since 2003 he has been director at the Art History Institute in Florence - Max Planck Institute . Since 2008 he has been honorary professor at the Institute for Art and Visual History at the Humboldt University in Berlin .

Research priorities and projects

Since his earliest work, Gerhard Wolf has been interested in the entanglement of images and places, the role of artistic form in religious and scientific contexts, and the differences and interplay between linguistic and visual aesthetics. The focus of his research is on the art and visual culture of Italy and the Mediterranean region in their global contexts from late antiquity to modern times.

One focus of Gerhard Wolf's scientific work is art and the interpretation of the world of Italian urban cultures from 12th to 15th Century, the intertwining of art theory and image theory ( Dante , Alberti , Van Eyck , Cusanus ), historical image and media anthropology as well as the history of method (especially Warburg and Benjamin ).

His interests first become manifest in the comprehensive studies of the non-human-made image of Christ and religious images. On the one hand, these lead to questions of artistic authorship and image techniques, which u. a. be followed up in a project on the line between graphics and writing (with Marzia Faietti). On the other hand, ritual and sacred topography form a central subject of research on religious images. This connects a project on Jerusalem as a narrative and iconic space in the three monotheistic religions (with Annette Hoffmann and in cooperation with Bianca Kuehnel, financed by GIF) and another on Georgia and the art history of the Caucasus (with Annette Hoffmann and Barbara Schellewald) .

A major concern is the wolf cooperation of different disciplines such as the Byzantine , the Islamic Studies , the Jewish Studies and focused on the West art history for the study of post-classical to modern Mediterranean. Conferences and workshops not only examine the Mediterranean region as a place of dynamic processes and multiple interactions, but also enable the dialogue between scientists from different disciplines.

The Getty Foundation-funded project "Art, Space and Mobility in the Early Ages of Globalization", which Gerhard Wolf leads together with Hannah Baader and Avinoam Shalem and which extends the focus to Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent , should also be understood in this sense . In the KHI project and scholarship program “Connecting Art Histories in the Museum” (with Hannah Baader as a cooperation between the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz and the Staatliche Museen Berlin ) these thematic and methodological horizons are expanded to include collections and the presentation of objects in museums. The project with Alessandra Russo and Diana Fane “Imàgenes en vuelo”, on the other hand, examines the transatlantic relationship between Mexico and Europe and the globalization of images in the early modern period. In 2013 the festschrift published by Manuela DeGiorgi, Annette Hoffmann and Nicola Suthor appeared: Synergies in Visual Culture - Image Cultures in Dialog.

Exhibitions

• Faith, hope, love, death (Albertina and Kunsthalle, Vienna, 1995/96): scientific advisor
• Rhetoric of Passions (Tokyo and Hamburg, 1999): scientific advisor
• Il Volto di Cristo (Rome, Palazzo delle Esposizioni, 2000/2001), curated with Giovanni Morello.
• Mandylion. Intorno al Sacro Volto (Genoa, 2004), curated with Colette Bozzo Dufour and Anna Rosa Calderoni Masetti.
• Georgia - Medieval Monuments (online exhibition, 2008), curated by the photo library of the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz - Max Planck Institute and Gerhard Wolf
• El Vuelo de las Imágenes. Arte plumario en México y Europa , (Museo Nacional and Museo de Antropologia, Mexico City, 2011), curated with Diana Fane and Alessandra Russo.
• Florence! , curated with Anna Maria Giusti and Bernd Roeck, Art and Exhibition Hall of the Federal Republic of Germany , Bonn, winter 2013/14

Publications

Monographs

• Salus Populi Romani. The history of Roman cult images in the Middle Ages , VCH, Weinheim 1990.
• Veil and mirror. Traditions of the image of Christ and the image concepts of the Renaissance , Wilhelm Fink, Munich 2002.
• Volti di Cristo , Vallecchi Editore, Florence 2006 (with Ludovica Sebregondi).
• Facing the wall. The Palestinian – Israeli Barriers , König, Cologne 2011 (with Avinoam Shalem).
• The Night of Pictures , Rombach, Freiburg im Breisgau 2011 (with Philine Helas).
• The vase and the stool: thing, picture or an art history of vessels , Verlag Kettler, Dortmund, 2019.

Editorships

• The Holy Face and the Paradox of Representation , ed. v. Herbert L. Kessler et al. Gerhard Wolf, Bologna 1998 (Villa Spellman Colloquia, 6).
• Il Volto di Cristo , ed. v. Giovanni Morello et al. Gerhard Wolf (exhibition catalog Rome 2000/01), Milan 2000.
• Mandylion. Intorno al Sacro Volto, da Bisanzio a Genova , ed. v. Gerhard Wolf, Colette Bozzo Dufour a. Anna Rosa Calderoni Masetti (exhibition catalog Genoa 2004), Milan 2004.
• The Miraculous Image in the Late Middle Ages and Renaissance , ed. v. Erik Thunø u. Gerhard Wolf (Rome Congress Files 2003), Rome 2004.
• Iconology of the space. The veil as a medium and metaphor , ed. with Johannes Endres a. Barbara Wittmann. Munich 2005.
• L'Immagine di Cristo. Dall'Acheropita alla Mano d'Artista. Dal tardo medioevo all'età barocca , ed. v. Christoph L. Frommel u. Gerhard Wolf (Atti del Convegno "L'immagine di Cristo da van Eyck a Bernini" Rome, March 2001) Città del Vaticano Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana 2006.
• Book courses: Miscommunication on book art, the desire to read and library history; Homage to Dieter Klein , ed. with Annette Hoffmann u. Frank Martin. Heidelberg 2006.
• Poverty and poor relief in Italian urban culture between the 13th and 16th centuries: images, texts and social practices , ed. with Philine Helas. Frankfurt etc. 2006.
• Intorno al Sacro Volto: Genova, Bisanzio e il Mediterraneo (secoli XI – XIV) , ed. with Anna Rosa Calderoni Masetti u. Colette Dufour Bozzo, Venice 2007.
• Il mecenatismo di Caterina de 'Medici: poesia, festivals, musica, pittura, scultura, architettura , ed. with Sabine Frommel, in collaboration with v. Flaminia Bardati, Venice 2008.
• Linea I: grafie di immagini tra Quattrocento e Cinquecento , ed. with Marzia Faietti, Venice 2008.
• Rothko / Giotto (exhibition catalog Berlin 2009), ed. with Stefan Weppelmann , Munich 2009.
• La stella e la porpora , ed. with Giovanna Lazzi, Florence 2009.
• The Sea, Exchange and the Limits of Representation , ed. with Hannah Baader, Zurich-Berlin 2010.
• Strangers in town. Orders, Representations and Social Practices (13th-15th Centuries) , ed. with Peter Bell and Dirk Suckow, Frankfurt am Main [u. a.] 2010.
• Islamic artefacts in the Mediterranean world: trade, gift exchange and artistic transfer , ed. with Catarina Schmidt Arcangeli, Venice 2010.
• El Vuelo de las Imágenes. Arte Plumario en México y Europe. (Exhibition catalog Mexico City 2011), ed. with Alessandra Russo and Diana Fane. Mexico City 2011.
• Colors between two worlds. The Florentine Codex of Berhardin de Sahagún , ed. with Joseph Connors. Cambridge Mass. 2011.
• Jerusalem as Narrative Space , ed. with Annette Hoffmann. Leiden 2012.
• La cattedrale di San Lorenzo a Genova (Mirabilia Italiae), ed. with Anna Rosa Calderoni Masetti. Parma 2012.
• Giochi, metamorfosi e seduzioni della Linea , ed. with Marzia Faietti. Florence 2012.
• Islamic Art and the Museum , ed. with Benoît Junod, Georges Khalil and Stefan Weber. London 2012.
• La pittura su tavola del secolo XII , ed. with Cecilia Frosinini and Alessio Monciatti. Florence 2012.
• Litoral and Liminal Spaces. The Early Modern Mediterranean and Beyond. Special issue of the communications of the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz 2014/1, ed. with Hannah Baader.
• Jacopo Ligozzi 2015 . Special issue of the communications of the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz 2015/2, ed. with Marzia Faietti and Alessandro Nova .
• The Salerno Ivories. Objects, Histories, Contexts , ed. with Francesca Dell'Acqua, Anthony Cutler, Herbert L. Kessler and Avinoam Shalem. Berlin 2016
• Images at Work. Special issue from Representations 133/2016. hrsp. with Hannah Baader and Ittai Weinryb.
• Architectura picta nell'arte italiana da Giotto a Veronese , ed. with Sabine Frommel. Modena 2016.
• Picture vehicles. Aby Warburg's Legacy and the Future of Iconology , ed. with Andreas Beyer , Horst Bredekamp and Uwe Fleckner. Wagenbach, Berlin 2018.

Memberships and honors (selection)

• Hanno and Ilse Hahn Prize (1994)
• Associate member of the Board of the Comité International d'Histoire de l'Art (since 2012)
• Board of Contributing Editors, Res (Harvard University) (since 2002)
• Rivista di Iconologia (Florence, Pisa) (since 2002)
• Annales de Investigaciones Esteticas (Mexico) (since 2003)
• Honorary member of the Accademia delle Arti del Disegno , Florence (since 2004)
• Honorary member of the Amici delle Pietre Dure, Florence (since 2005)
• Honorary member of the Centro Argentino de Investigadores de Arte (since 2007)
• Advisory board of the Getty Research Institute (since 2008)
• Full member of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities (since 2009)
• Member of the Scientific Commission of the Science Council (since February 2013)
• German network of the Anna Lindh Foundation (Mediterranean Foundation)

Web links

• Literature by and about Gerhard Wolf in the catalog of the German National Library
• Website at the Art History Institute in Florence