Michael Levey

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Michael Vincent Levey (born June 8, 1927 in Wimbledon , London , England , † December 28, 2008 in Louth (Lincolnshire) ) was a British art historian and director of the National Gallery in London.

Life

Levey grew up in Leigh-on-Sea in the County of Essex and attended the Oratory School , a Catholic boarding school near Reading . He was drafted in 1945 and spent most of the time in Egypt until his release in 1948 . This was followed by a degree in English at Exeter College in Oxford , which he graduated with a First Class Honors grade after two years .

In 1951 Levey joined the National Gallery in London as an assistant to Sir Martin Davies . He was able to combine his work in the gallery with academic work, so that in 1956 his first work, a catalog of the gallery's inventory of Italian paintings from the 18th century, appeared. From the 1960s onwards, several of his books appeared that were equipped with color reproductions and, since they were relatively cheap because of their high print runs, were accepted by a wide audience. His book A Concise History of Painting: From Giotto to Cézanne was also published in Germany.

1963/1964 Levey Slade was Professor of Fine Art at Cambridge University . From 1968 he held the post of Deputy Keeper and Keeper and from 1973 director of the National Gallery. He resigned from this position in 1985 to take better care of his multiple sclerosis wife, the novelist Brigid Brophy , who died of the disease.

Levey was a supporter of the British Humanist Association . Since 1983 he has been a member ( fellow ) of the British Academy .

Honourings and prices

Publications (selection)

  • 1959: The German School . National Gallery Catalogs, London 1959.
  • 1962: A Concise History of Painting: From Giotto to Cézanne . World of Art Series. Thames & Hudson, London, ISBN 0-500-20024-6 .
    • German: From Giotto to Cézanne . Painting from six centuries . Kindler Verlag, Munich, 1962.
  • 1964: Dürer , Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London.
  • 1965: From Rococo to Revolution: Major Trends in Eighteenth-Century Painting . World of Art Series. Thames & Hudson, London.
  • 1967: The Early Renaissance . Penguin.
  • 1968: A History of Western Art . Oxford University Press, Oxford. ISBN 0-27543430-3 .
    • 1970: German: The Western Art . Molden, Vienna / Munich / Zurich 1970.
  • 1971: Painting at Court . Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London.
  • 1971: The Life and Death of Mozart . Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London. ISBN 0-297-00477-8 .
    • 1971: German: Life and death of Wolfgang Amadé Mozart . Bertelsmann, Munich 1971. ISBN 3-570-06165-5 .
  • 1978: The Case of Walter Pater . Thames and Hudson, London 1978, ISBN 0-500011931 .
  • 1985: Kenneth MacKenzie Clark (1903-1983) . Oxford University Press, Oxford, England 1985.
  • 1986: Giambattista Tiepolo . His Life and Art . Yale University Press, New Haven, Connecticut.
in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (ODNB)

literature

  • Christopher White: Michael Vincent Levey, 1927-2008 . In: Proceedings of the British Academy . tape 161 , 2009, p. 235-256 ( thebritishacademy.ac.uk [PDF]).

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Deceased Fellows. British Academy, accessed June 29, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Levey, Michael
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Levey, Michael Vincent (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British art historian
DATE OF BIRTH June 8, 1927
PLACE OF BIRTH Wimbledon , London
DATE OF DEATH December 28, 2008
Place of death Louth (Lincolnshire)