Heinrich Wölfflin was a Swiss art historian, whose objective classifying principles were influential in the development of formal analysis in art history in the early 20th century. He taught at Basel, Berlin and Munich in the generation that raised German art history to pre-eminence. His three great books, still consulted, are Renaissance und Barock, Die Klassische Kunst, and Kunstgeschichtliche Grundbegriffe.
Origins and career
Wölfflin was born in Winterthur, Switzerland, and is buried in Basel. His father, Eduard Wölfflin, was a professor of classical philology who taught at Munich University and helped found and organize the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae. Wölfflin studied art history and history with Jakob Burckhardt at the University of Basel, philosophy with Wilhelm Dilthey at Berlin University, and art history and philosophy at Munich University where his father had taught. He received his degree from Munich University in 1886 in philosophy, although he was already on a course to study the newly minted discipline of art history. Wölfflin's principal philosophy mentor at the University of Munich, where Wölfflin got his doctoral degree, was the renowned professor of archaeology Heinrich Brunn. Greatly influenced by his mentors, particularly neo-Kantian Johannes Volkelt and Heinrich Brunn, his dissertation, Prolegomena zu einer Psychologie der Architektur attempted to show that architecture had a basis in form through the empathetic response of human form. It is considered now to be one of the founding texts of the emerging discipline of art history, although it was barely noted when it was published. After graduating in 1886, Wölfflin published the result of a years' travel and study in Italy, as his Renaissance und Barock, the book that evaluated the pathological "Baroque" as a new stylistic category and a serious area of study. For Wölfflin, the 16th-century art now described as "Mannerist" was part of the Baroque aesthetic, one that Burckhardt before him as well as most French and English-speaking scholars for a generation after him dismissed as degenerate. On the death of Jacob Burckhardt in 1897 Wöllflin succeeded him in the Art History Chair at Basel. He is credited with having introduced the teaching method of using twin parallel projectors in the delivery of art history lectures, so that images could be compared when magic lanterns became less dangerous. Sir Ernst Gombrich recalled being inspired by him, as well as Erwin Panofsky. Wölfflin taught at Berlin University from 1901 to 1912, Munich University from 1912 to 1924 and Zurich University from 1924 until his retirement.
''Principles of Art History''
In Principles of Art History, Wölfflin formulated five pairs of opposed or contrary precepts in the form and style of art of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries which demonstrated a shift in the nature of artistic vision between the two periods. These were:
From linear to painterly
From plane to recession:
From closed form to open form
From multiplicity to unity:
From absolute clarity to relative clarity of the subject:, then developed it further in The Principles of Art History. Wolfflin's Principles of Art History has recently become more influential among art historians and philosophers of art. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, published a special issue commemorating the 100th anniversary of the publication of the Principles in 2015, edited by Bence Nanay.
