The Critical Historians of Art - Paperback

by Michael Podro (Author)

The major transformations in the philosophy of history and in aesthetics in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Germany played an important part in the development of the subsequent historiography of art. This is the first extensive critical account of the work of the figures of that era who made the fundamental contributions to the field - Semper, Riegel, Wolfflin, Warburg, and Panofsky. A perceptive and fascinating introduction for the student of history and aesthetics.

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Major transformations in philosophy in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries had a deep impact on the subsequent historiography of art, particularly that which developed in Germany between the 1820s and the 1920s. It central figures included Semper, Riegel, Wolfflin, Warburg and Panofsky. Their conceptions of art had their foundation in the aesthetics of Kant, Schiller and Hegel, and they set out to construct interpretative procedures which bring out the role of art within the mental life of the past, and retrieve it for that of the present.