Max Jakob Friedländer
Max Jakob Friedländer (5 July 1867 in Berlin – 11 October 1958 in Amsterdam) was a German-Jewish museum curator and
He invented the style term Antwerp Mannerism, and created many of the notnames for undocumented artists in this style, and others of the period.
He should not be confused with the German-American art historian Walter Friedländer; they were not related.[1]
Approach to art history
Friedländer's approach to art history was essentially that of a connoisseur. He gave priority to a critical reading based on sensitivity rather than on grand artistic and or aesthetic theories. He described it as follows:
If the determination of the authorship of an individual work of art most certainly is not the ultimate and highest task of artistic erudition; even if it were no path to the goal: nevertheless, without a doubt, it is a school for the eye, since there is no formulation of a question which forces us to penetrate so deeply the essence of an individual work as that concerning the identity of the author. The individual work, rightly understood, teaches us what a comprehensive knowledge universal artistic activity is incapable of teaching us.[3]
His career was marked by a disdain for the
Photo archive
During his lifetime he took high quality photographs of artwork wherever he travelled. His personal archive with approximately 15,000 photos and reproductions of 15th- and 16th-century paintings from the North and South Netherlands are often accompanied with notes including such things as the provenance, attribution, relative condition, and location of the paintings. The majority of his work has been transcribed and digitised in the RKDimages database of the Dutch National Institute of Art History (
Publications
- Meisterwerke der niederländischen Malerei des 15. und 16. Jahrhunderts, 1903 (Masterpieces of Netherlandish painting of the 15th and 16th centuries).[1]
- Von Jan van Eyck bis Bruegel, 1916 (From Jan van Eyck to Bruegel)
- A. Dürer, 1923
- Die altniederländische Malerei, 1924–37. In English Early Netherlandish Painting; his major work, printed in 16 volumes
- Echt und unecht, 1929 (Real and unreal)
- Von Kunst und Kennerschaft, 1946 (On art and connoisseurship)
- Essays über die Landschaftsmalerei, 1947 (Essays on landscape painting)
- Early Netherlandish Painting, vol. VII, Leiden and Brussels, 1972
References
- ^ a b c d "Dictionary of Art historians: "Friedländer, Max J[acob]"". Archived from the original on 2010-11-27. Retrieved 2010-01-25.
- ISBN 0-238-78921-7.
- ^ Friedländer, Max Jakob. "On art and connoisseurship". Retrieved 20 June 2012.
- S2CID 191393770. Retrieved 6 Jan 2021.
- RKD
Further reading
- Friedrich Winkler: Friedländer, Max. In: NDB Bd. 5, S. 455 f.
- Annick Born: Antwerp Mannerism: a fashionable style? in: ExtravagANT. A forgotten chapter of Antwerp painting 1500–1530. Catalogue Maastricht and Antwerp 2005, pp. 10–19.
- Leo Blumenreich: Verzeichnis der Schriften Max J. Friedländers. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1927.
External links
- Media related to Max J. Friedländer at Wikimedia Commons
- Quotations related to Max Jakob Friedländer at Wikiquote
- Max Jakob Friedländer in the German National Library catalogue
- Dictionary of Art historians: "Friedländer, Max J[acob]"