Erwin Panofsky

Erwin Panofsky (March 30, 1892, in

His work represents a high point in the modern academic study of

Panofsky's ideas were highly influential in intellectual history in general,[3] particularly in his use of historical ideas to interpret artworks and vice versa.

Biography

European years

Panofsky was born in

The original 1920 manuscript of Panofsky's Habilitationsschrift, his second dissertation, which is titled "Die Gestaltungsprinzipien Michelangelos, besonders in ihrem Verhältnis zu denen Raffaels" ("The Composition Principles of Michelangelo, particularly in their relation to those of Raphael"), was found in August 2012 by art historian Stephan Klingen in an old Nazi safe in Munich's Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte.^[4][5][6]

It had long been assumed that this manuscript was lost in 1943/44 in Hamburg, as this important study was never published and the art historian's widow was unable to locate it in Hamburg. It seems as if art historian Ludwig Heinrich Heydenreich, who had studied under Panofsky, was in the possession of this manuscript from 1946 to 1970. In the Süddeutsche Zeitung, Willibald Sauerländer shed some light on the question of whether Heydenreich shared his recovery of the manuscript or not: "Panofsky has historically distanced himself from his early writings on Michelangelo, as he tired of the subject, and (according to Sauerländer) developed a professional conflict with Austro-Hungarian art historian Johannes Wilde, who accused Panofsky of not crediting him with ideas gleaned from a conversation they had about Michelangelo drawings. Perhaps Panofsky didn't care about the whereabouts of his lost work and Heydenreich was not malicious in keeping it a secret ... but questions still remain."^[7]

Panofsky's academic career in art history took him to the University of Berlin, University of Munich, and finally to University of Hamburg, where he taught from 1920 to 1933. It was during this period that his first major writings on art history began to appear. A significant early work was Idea: Ein Beitrag zur Begriffsgeschichte der älteren Kunstheorie (1924; translated into English as Idea: A Concept in Art Theory), based on the ideas of Ernst Cassirer.

American years (from 1931)

Panofsky first came to the United States in 1931 to teach at New York University. Although initially allowed to spend alternate terms in Hamburg and New York City, after the Nazis came to power in Germany his appointment in Hamburg was terminated because he was Jewish, and he remained permanently in the United States with his art historian wife (since 1916), Dorothea "Dora" Mosse (1885–1965). He and his wife became part of the Kahler-Kreis. By 1934 he was teaching concurrently at New York University and Princeton University, and in 1935 he was invited to join the faculty of the new Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, where he remained for the rest of his career.^[8] In 1999, "Panofsky Lane", named in his honor, was created in the institute's faculty housing complex.^[9]

Panofsky was a member of the

He became particularly well known for his studies of symbols and iconography in art. First in a 1934 article, then in his Early Netherlandish Painting (1953), Panofsky was the first to interpret

Panofsky was known to be a friend with physicists

Iconology

Panofsky was the most eminent representative of iconology, a method of studying the history of art created by Aby Warburg and his disciples, especially Fritz Saxl, at the Warburg Institute in Hamburg. A personal and professional friendship linked him to Fritz Saxl in collaboration with whom he produced a large part of his work. He gave a short and precise description of his method in his article "Iconography and Iconology", published in 1939.

Three strata of subject matter or meaning

In Studies in Iconology Panofsky details his idea of three levels of art-historical understanding:^[15]

• Primary or natural subject matter: The most basic level of understanding, this stratum consists of perception of the work's pure form. Take, for example, a painting of the Last Supper. If we stopped at this first stratum, such a picture could only be perceived as a painting of 13 men seated at a table. This first level is the most basic understanding of a work, devoid of any added cultural knowledge.
• Secondary or conventional subject matter (
  St. Mark
  .
• Tertiary or intrinsic meaning or content (
  St. Mark
  such an important saint to the patron of this work?" Essentially, this last stratum is a synthesis; it is the art historian asking "what does it all mean?"

For Panofsky, it was important to consider all three strata as one examines Renaissance art. Irving Lavin says "it was this insistence on, and search for, meaning — especially in places where no one suspected there was any — that led Panofsky to understand art, as no previous historian had, as an intellectual endeavor on a par with the traditional liberal arts."^[16]

Style and the Film Medium

In his 1936 essay "Style and Medium in the Motion Pictures (text online), Panofsky seeks to describe the visual symptoms endemic" to the medium of film.^[17]

Legacy

In 2016, the

• Idea: A Concept in Art Theory (1924)[20]
• Perspective as Symbolic Form (1927)^[21]
• Studies in Iconology (1939)^[22]
• The Life and Art of Albrecht Dürer (1943)^[23]
• (trans.) Abbot Suger on the Abbey Church of St.-Denis and its art treasures (1946).^[24] Based on the Norman Wait Harris lectures delivered at Northwestern university in 1938.
• Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism (1951)^[25]
• Early Netherlandish Painting: Its Origins and Character (1953).^[26] Based on the 1947–48 Charles Eliot Norton Lectures
  .
• Meaning in the Visual Arts (1955)[27]
• Pandora's Box: the Changing Aspects of a Mythical Symbol (1956) (with Dora Panofsky)^[28]
• Renaissance and Renascences in Western Art (1960)^[29]
• Tomb Sculpture: Four Lectures on Its Changing Aspects from Ancient Egypt to Bernini (1964)^[30]
• Saturn and Melancholy: Studies in the History of Natural Philosophy, Religion, and Art (1964) (with Raymond Klibansky and Fritz Saxl)^[31]
• Problems in Titian, mostly iconographic (1969)^[32]
• Three Essays on Style (1995; ed. Irving Lavin):^[33] "What Is Baroque?", "Style and Medium in the Motion Pictures", "The Ideological Antecedents of the Rolls-Royce Radiator". Intro. by Irving Lavin.
• "The Mouse That Michelangelo Failed to Carve" (PDF) (Essays In Memory of Karl Lehmann ed.). N.Y.: Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. 1964. pp. 242–255.
• Carmina Latina (2018; ed. with introduction and short annotations by Gereon Becht-Jördens)^[34]

References

References