Hans Peter L'Orange

Hans Peter L'Orange around 1930

Hans Peter L'Orange (born March 2, 1903 in Oslo ; died December 5, 1983 there ) was a Norwegian classical archaeologist and art historian .

life and career

Hans Peter L'Orange came from a family of officers, his grandfather Hans Peter L'Orange (1835–1907) was commander in chief of the Norwegian armed forces, his father was Major General Hans Wilhelm L'Orange (1868–1950). His mother was his wife Regine Amalie Gulbranson (1879-1949). He grew up in Oslo, then still known as Kristiania, and after the examen artium in 1921, which gave him access to the universities and which corresponded to the general university entrance qualification, he completed a year at the military academy . He then studied art history and ancient Greek . He heard among others at the University of Munich with Heinrich Wolfflin , one of the most important representatives of art-historical formalism . After the master’s examination in 1927, he received his doctorate in 1933 at the University of Oslo with the thesis “Studies on the history of late antique portraits”.

At the end of the 1920s he moved to Rome, from where he wrote regularly for the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten about Benito Mussolini and the development of Italian society during the time of fascism until the outbreak of World War II . During this time he was a university scholar from 1930 to 1936. Together with the building researcher Armin von Gerkan , who worked on the architecture, he published his second important and fundamental work in 1939, "The late antique picture decoration of the Arch of Constantine" . In 1942 he was appointed to the chair of Classical Archeology at the University of Oslo, which he held until his retirement in 1973. Visiting professorships led him to the Dumbarton Oaks Library in Washington, DC in 1950 and to the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore in 1966/67 .

Research and work

During his research at the Longobard Church of Santa Maria in Valle , the so-called Tempietto longobardo , in Cividale del Friuli , he recognized the need to give Norwegian research a permanent base in Italy. In 1959, on his initiative, Det norske institutt i Roma (“Norwegian Institute in Rome”) was founded as an institution of the University of Oslo and moved into an apartment on Corso Vittorio Emanuele II before moving into a villa in Via XXX Aprile in 1962 Gianicolo in Trastevere . From 1959 to 1973, Hans Peter L'Orange was the director of the institute and in this way shaped generations of Norwegian humanities scholars.

L'Orange's research was dedicated to the transition from late antique art to the art of the Middle Ages . With his formalistic approach, he was completely in the tradition of Alois Riegl , who had significantly coined the term late antiquity, and the archaeological hermeneutics of Carl Roberts . Basics of objective art perception - correct vision, unprejudiced observation of the object, correct description - he tried to develop on the basis of this tension field of transitional art, in order to open the view of art to the artistic will behind the art . Following on from Wölfflin, the result was expressed in the development of conceptual pairs of opposites that are intended to contrast the periods of artistic desire and, for example, in the volume of essays from 1943 “Fra antikk til middelalder. Fra legeme til symbol ” -“ From antiquity to the Middle Ages. From body to symbol ”by L'Orange. The late antique portrait was an important key to him.

But he also turned to other areas of ancient and early medieval art, such as the Hellenistic and Roman rulers' cult, the sculptures by Sperlonga , and the late antique mosaics.

Honors

As early as 1940, Hans Peter L'Orange received the Fridtjof Nansens belønning in the historical-philological class for outstanding research. For his research on the church of Santa Maria in Valle in Cividale he was made an honorary citizen of the city, for his scientific achievements he was awarded the Norsk kulturråds ærespris ("Honorary Prize of the Norwegian Culture Council") in 1969 . The Royal Norwegian Scientific Society awarded him the Gunnerus Medal in 1970 and the University of Kiel in 1977 the Henrik Steffens Prize .

Fonts (selection)

A bibliography of the writings Hans Peter L'Oranges up to 1972 offers: J. Robsahm in Hjalmar Torp (Ed.): Likeness and Icon. Selected Studies in Classical and Early Mediaeval Art. Odense University Press, Odense 1973, pp. XVIII – XXIII.

• Mussolinis and Cæsarernes Rome in the billeder fra reguleringen and de siste utgravninger. Oslo 1932.
• Studies on the history of the late antique portrait. Aschehoug, Oslo 1933.
• with Armin von Gerkan : The late antique decorations of the Arch of Constantine. Gruyter, Berlin 1939.
• Fra antique til middelalder, fra legeme til symbol. Tre art historical essays. Dreyer, Oslo 1943.
• Apotheosis in Ancient Portraiture. Aschehoug, Oslo 1947.
• Keiseren på Himmeltronen. Dreyer, Oslo 1949.
• Romersk idyll. Dreyer, Oslo / Copenhagen 1952.
• with Harry Fett : Fra oldtid til middelalder. Oslo 1954.
• Old-time slot on Sicilia. Blad av min italienske skissebok. Dreyer, Oslo 1955.
• Fra principat til dominat. An art and collection history study i den romerske keisertid. Aschehoug, Oslo 1958.
• with Per Jonas Nordhagen : Mosaikk from antikk to middelalder. Dreyer, Oslo 1958.
• Mot middelalder. Dreyer, Oslo 1963.
• Romerske keisere in marble and bronse. Dreyer, Oslo 1967.
• Center and periferi. Ni utvalgte essays. Dreyer, Oslo 1973.
• with Hjalmar Torp : Il tempietto longobardo di Cividale. Two volumes. Bretschneider, Rome 1977–79.
• with Thomas Thiis-Evensen: Oldtidens bygningsverden: Dreyer, Oslo 1978.
• Studies on the iconography of cosmic kingship in the ancient world. 1982. Caratzas, New Rochelle, NY 1982, ISBN 0-89241-150-3 .
• The late antique image of rulers from Diocletian to the sons of Constantine, 284–361 AD (= The Roman image of rulers. III. Department, Volume 4). Mann, Berlin 1984, ISBN 3-7861-1374-2 .
• Essays edited by Kristin Bliksrud Aavitsland. Dreyer, Oslo 1996, ISBN 82-504-2311-9 .

literature

• L'Orange, Hans Peter in: Enciclopedia Italiana. Appendix II. Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana, Rome 1949.
• Hjalmar Torp : Hans Peter L'Orange. In: Acta ad archaeologiam et artium historiam pertinentia . Series altera in 8 °, 5, 1985, pp. VII-XV.
• Kristin Eliassen: Hans Peter L'Orange. In: Norsk biografisk leksikon . Band: Lassen-Nitter. Kunnskapsforlaget, Oslo 2003 ( online ).

Web links

• Hans Peter L'Orange in the store norske leksikon (Norwegian)
• L'Orange, Hans Peter at treccani.it (Italian)