Erwin Panofsky

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Erwin Panofsky (30 March 1892 - 14 March 1968) was a German art historian and essayist often credited with the founding of the academic study of iconography. His most well-known work is Studies in Iconology : Humanist Themes in the Art of the Renaissance (1939, reissued 1972).

1 Career
2 Books
3 About Panofsky
4 See also
5 External link

[edit] Career

Panofsky earned his Ph.D. in 1914 from the University of Freiburg. Was active in the Warburg School in Germany, which included Ernst Cassirer and Aby Warburg. Beginning in 1935 he taught at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton Township, New Jersey. In 1942 he was invited to deliver the Page-Barbour lectures and chose for his subject "The Gothic Style".

His discussions of Albrecht Dürer's engraving Melencolia I, and Jan van Eyck's painting The Arnolfini Wedding (as Panofsky christened it) have generated particular debate among art historians.

He was also friends with Wolfgang Pauli, one of the main contributors to quantum physics and atomic theory.

[edit] Books

Perspective as Symbolic Form (1927)
Studies in Iconology (1939)
The Life and Art of Albrecht Dürer (1943), Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1955
Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism (1951)
Early Netherlandish Painting (1953)
Meaning in the Visual Arts (1955)
Renaissance and Renascences in Western Art (1962)
Tomb Sculpture (1964)
Problems in Titian, mostly iconographic (1969)

[edit] About Panofsky

Holly, Michael Ann, Panofsky and the Foundations of Art History, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, (1985)
Lavin, Irving, editor, Meaning in the Visual Arts: View from the Outside. A Centennial Commemoration of Erwin Panofsky (1892-1968), Princeton, Institute of Advanced Study, (1995)
Ferretti, Sylvia, Cassirer, Panofsky, Warburg: Symbol, Art, and History, New Haven, Yale University Press, (1989)