Josef Rudolph Thomas Strzygowski (March 7, 1862 – January 2, 1941) was a Polish-Austrian
art historian
Art history is the study of aesthetic objects and visual expression in historical and stylistic context. Traditionally, the discipline of art history emphasized painting, drawing, sculpture, architecture, ceramics and decorative arts; yet today, ...
known for his theories promoting influences from the art of the Near East on European art, for example that of Early Christian
Armenian architecture
Armenian architecture comprises architectural works with an aesthetic or historical connection to the Armenian people. It is difficult to situate this architectural style within precise geographical or chronological limits, but many of its monume ...
on the early Medieval architecture of Europe, outlined in his book, ''Die Baukunst der Armenier und Europa''. He is considered a member of the
Vienna School of Art History.
Life
Strzygowski was born in
Biala,
Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria
The Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria,, ; pl, Królestwo Galicji i Lodomerii, ; uk, Королівство Галичини та Володимирії, Korolivstvo Halychyny ta Volodymyrii; la, Rēgnum Galiciae et Lodomeriae also known as ...
(today part of
Poland
Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populou ...
). His mother, Edle Trass von Friedelfeldt, was from minor nobility and his father was a cloth manufacturer. Strzygowski initially intended to pursue the same trade, beginning an apprenticeship in a weaving plant in 1880, however, in 1882 he abandoned this career and enrolled at the
University of Vienna
The University of Vienna (german: Universität Wien) is a public research university located in Vienna, Austria. It was founded by Duke Rudolph IV in 1365 and is the oldest university in the German-speaking world. With its long and rich hi ...
. He soon transferred to the
University of Munich
The Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (simply University of Munich or LMU; german: Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München) is a public research university in Munich, Germany. It is Germany's sixth-oldest university in continuous operatio ...
, where he studied
art history
Art history is the study of aesthetic objects and visual expression in historical and stylistic context. Traditionally, the discipline of art history emphasized painting, drawing, sculpture, architecture, ceramics and decorative arts; yet today, ...
and completed a dissertation on the
iconography
Iconography, as a branch of art history, studies the identification, description and interpretation of the content of images: the subjects depicted, the particular compositions and details used to do so, and other elements that are distinct fro ...
of the Baptism of Christ, published in 1885 as ''Iconographie der Taufe Christi .''
For the next three years Strzygowski lived in
Rome
, established_title = Founded
, established_date = 753 BC
, founder = King Romulus ( legendary)
, image_map = Map of comune of Rome (metropolitan city of Capital Rome, region Lazio, Italy).svg
, map_caption ...
, where he completed a study of ''Cimabue und Rom'' (1887) (''
Cimabue
Cimabue (; ; – 1302), Translated with an introduction and notes by J.C. and P Bondanella. Oxford: Oxford University Press (Oxford World’s Classics), 1991, pp. 7–14. . also known as Cenni di Pepo or Cenni di Pepi, was an Italian painter ...
and Rome''), which emphasized the
Byzantine
The Byzantine Empire, also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium, was the continuation of the Roman Empire primarily in its eastern provinces during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantinopl ...
sources of the Italian painter's work. Late in life he stated that this work led to the question which would define all of his subsequent scholarship: "What is Rome, what, in reality, is Italian and European art?"
Following his Roman sojourn, Strzygowski travelled to
Thessaloniki
Thessaloniki (; el, Θεσσαλονίκη, , also known as Thessalonica (), Saloniki, or Salonica (), is the second-largest city in Greece, with over one million inhabitants in its metropolitan area, and the capital of the geographic region of ...
,
Mount Athos
Mount Athos (; el, Ἄθως, ) is a mountain in the distal part of the eponymous Athos peninsula and site of an important centre of Eastern Orthodox monasticism in northeastern Greece. The mountain along with the respective part of the peni ...
,
Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...
, and
Moscow
Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 million ...
, thus developing a greater acquaintance with Byzantine and Russian art. In 1892 he was appointed to the faculty of the
University of Graz
The University of Graz (german: link=no, Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz, ), located in Graz, Austria, is the largest and oldest university in Styria, as well as the second-largest and second-oldest university in Austria.
History
The univers ...
, but in 1894 and 1895, he lived in
Cairo
Cairo ( ; ar, القاهرة, al-Qāhirah, ) is the capital of Egypt and its largest city, home to 10 million people. It is also part of the largest urban agglomeration in Africa, the Arab world and the Middle East: The Greater Cairo metr ...
, where he studied the early Byzantine and
Islamic art
Islamic art is a part of Islamic culture and encompasses the visual arts produced since the 7th century CE by people who lived within territories inhabited or ruled by Muslim populations. Referring to characteristic traditions across a wide ra ...
of
Egypt
Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning the North Africa, northeast corner of Africa and Western Asia, southwest corner of Asia via a land bridg ...
, and compiled a catalogue of the
Coptic art
Coptic art is the Christian art of the Byzantine- Greco-Roman Egypt and of Coptic Christian Churches. Coptic art is best known for its wall-paintings, textiles, illuminated manuscripts, and metalwork, much of which survives in monasteries ...
in the
Cairo Museum
The Museum of Egyptian Antiquities, known commonly as the Egyptian Museum or the Cairo Museum, in Cairo, Egypt, is home to an extensive collection of ancient Egyptian antiquities. It has 120,000 items, with a representative amount on display a ...
. Upon his return he entered a period of intense scholarly activity, publishing numerous articles on Byzantine and Islamic art, fields in which he considered himself to be the pioneer. Photographs attributed to Strzygowski are held in the
Conway Library at
The Courtauld Institute of Art, London whose archive, of primarily architectural images is in the process of being digitised under the wider Courtauld Connects project.
It was in the midst of this activity that Strzygowski published his first polemical work, ''Orient oder Rom: Beiträge zur Geschichte der spätantiken und frühchristlichen Kunst'' (1901) (''The Orient or Rome: contributions to the history of late antique and early Christian art''). Drawing on such diverse materials as
Palmyrene art and sculpture, Anatolian sarcophagi, late antique ivories from Egypt, and Coptic textiles, Strzygowski argued, in overtly racial and often racist terms, that style change in late antiquity was the product of an overwhelming "Oriental" or "Semitic" influence. In one modern characterization of both the argument and its rhetorical tone, "Strzygowski
resented
Resentment (also called ranklement or bitterness) is a complex, multilayered emotion that has been described as a mixture of disappointment, disgust and anger. Other psychologists consider it a mood or as a secondary emotion (including cogn ...
Hellas as a beautiful maiden who sold herself to an 'Old Semite' to be kept as the jewel of his harem."
''Orient oder Rom'' was explicitly framed as an attack on ''Die Wiener Genesis'' (1895), by the Viennese art historian
Franz Wickhoff
Franz Wickhoff (7 May 1853 – 6 April 1909) was an Austrian art historian, and is considered a member of the Vienna School of Art History.
Early life
Franz Wickhoff was born on 7 May 1853 in Steyr. He studied at the University of Vienna unde ...
, which had posited a Roman origin for the
late antique style, a thesis that was pursued further by
Alois Riegl
Alois Riegl (14 January 1858, Linz – 17 June 1905, Vienna) was an Austrian art historian, and is considered a member of the Vienna School of Art History. He was one of the major figures in the establishment of art history as a self-sufficient a ...
in his ''Spätrömische Kunstindustrie'', which also appeared in 1901. The ensuing controversy continued for decades and, if it resulted in no clear resolution, significantly raised the prominence of late antique art as an academic field of study.
In the early 1900s Strzygowski was invited by
Wilhelm von Bode
Wilhelm von Bode (10 December 1845 – 1 March 1929) was a German art historian and museum curator. Born Arnold Wilhelm Bode in Calvörde, he was ennobled in 1913. He was the creator and first curator of the Kaiser Friedrich Museum, now cal ...
to Germany to assist with the expansion of the Byzantine and other collections in Berlin museums.
In 1909, however, upon Wickhoff's death, Strzygowski was appointed as his successor at the University of Vienna, partly as a result of the breadth of his research, and partly as a result of intricate academic politics and (possibly) the advocacy of
Archduke Franz Ferdinand
Archduke Franz Ferdinand Carl Ludwig Joseph Maria of Austria, (18 December 1863 – 28 June 1914) was the heir presumptive to the throne of Austria-Hungary. His assassination in Sarajevo was the most immediate cause of World War I.
F ...
. His appointment resulted in an enduring schism among Viennese art historians, pitting Strzygowski against
Max Dvořák
Max Dvořák (4 June 1874 – 8 February 1921) was a Czech-born Austrian art historian. He was a professor of art history at the University of Vienna and a famous member of the Vienna School of Art History, employing a ''Geistesgeschichte'' metho ...
and
Julius von Schlosser
Julius Alwin Franz Georg Andreas Ritter von Schlosser (23 September 1866, Vienna – 1 December 1938, Vienna) was an Austrian art historian and an important member of the Vienna School of Art History. According to Ernst Gombrich, he was "One of the ...
, which was exacerbated when Strzygowski established his own research institute within the university (the ''Wiener Institut'' or ''Erstes kunsthistorisches Institut'').
In
Vienna
en, Viennese
, iso_code = AT-9
, registration_plate = W
, postal_code_type = Postal code
, postal_code =
, timezone = CET
, utc_offset = +1
, timezone_DST ...
Strzygowski continued to publish on a variety of topics, focusing particularly on the arts of Byzantium and Islam, but also treating
Armenia
Armenia (), , group=pron officially the Republic of Armenia,, is a landlocked country in the Armenian Highlands of Western Asia.The UNbr>classification of world regions places Armenia in Western Asia; the CIA World Factbook , , and ''O ...
n,
Norse, and
Slavic subjects, among others. He also gave frequent and well-attended public lectures to audiences "consisting partly, but not solely, of radical
pan-German students and sycophants." Strzygowski's own radical pan-Germanism had already become clear in his popular ''Die bildende Kunst der Gegenwart'' (1907) (''The visual art of the future''), in which he praised the painting of
Arnold Böcklin
Arnold Böcklin (16 October 182716 January 1901) was a Swiss symbolist painter.
Biography
He was born in Basel. His father, Christian Frederick Böcklin (b. 1802), was descended from an old family of Schaffhausen, and engaged in the silk trade ...
and called for a new German artist-hero to reject the heritage of classical antiquity and the Renaissance.
It would not be possible to summarise all of the theses advanced by Strzygowski in the course of his career. Brief mention may be made of his controversy with
Ernst Herzfeld over the origins of the
Mshatta facade
The Mshatta Facade is the decorated part of the facade of the 8th-century Umayyad residential palace of Qasr Mshatta, one of the Desert Castles of Jordan, which is now installed in the south wing of the Pergamon Museum in Berlin, Germany. It is ...
, in which Herzfeld's position was eventually proven to be correct; and his two-volume ''Die Baukunst der Armenier und Europa'' (1918) (''The architecture of the Armenians and Europe''), in which he claimed to have traced the origins of
Gothic architecture
Gothic architecture (or pointed architecture) is an architectural style that was prevalent in Europe from the late 12th to the 16th century, during the High and Late Middle Ages, surviving into the 17th and 18th centuries in some areas. It ...
to Armenia.
Strzygowski retired from the University of Vienna in 1933, but in 1934 founded the ''Gesellschaft für vergleichende Kunstforschung'' (Society for comparative art history) to serve as a platform for his theories. "In the final years, Strzygowski embraced the Nazi sentiments of racism and nationalism, although these appeared to be more the logical conclusion of his earlier theories than any attempt to court the political authorities." He died in 1941 in Vienna.
Legacy
In general Strzygowski's work was characterized by a reliance on formal comparisons at the expense of historical context, and by a pervasive exaltation of the peoples of the "North" and "East", with an attendant disdain for "Mediterranean" culture.
If Strzygowski's erratic methodology have largely discredited his own scholarship, his breadth of geographical interest helped to establish Islamic art, (something which, incidentally, Ernst Gombrich denied in his conversations with Didier Eribon), and
Jewish art as legitimate fields of study. Certain of his students (most notably
Otto Demus,
Fritz Novotny
Fritz Novotny (10 February 1903 in Vienna – 16 April 1983 in Vienna), was an Austrian art historian. He is considered a member of the Vienna School of Art History.
Biography
Novotny studied art history at the University of Vienna under Jos ...
, and Ernst Diez) were successfully able to pursue these interests without subscribing to their teacher's ideology.
Dictionary of Art Historians, ''Josef Strzygowski''
accessed 17-05-2009.
Notes
Bibliography
*J. Elsner, "The birth of late antiquity: Riegl and Strzygowski in 1901," ''Art History'' 25 (2002), pp. 358−79.
* F. Leonelli
''Actual Problems of Theory and History of Art: Collection of articles. Vol. 10.'' Ed: A. V. Zakharova, S. V. Maltseva, E. Iu. Staniukovich-Denisova. Moscow: Lomonosov Moscow State University / St. Petersburg: NP-Print, 2020, pp. 609–617
*C. Maranci, ''Medieval Armenian Architecture: Constructions of Race and Nation'' (Louvain, 2001).
* S. Marchand, "The rhetoric of artifacts and the decline of classical humanism: the case of Josef Strzygowski," ''History and Theory'' 33 (1994), pp. 106–30.
External links
Strzygowski at the Biographical Dictionary of Art Historians
Website of the ''Gesellschaft für vergleichende Kunstforschung''
(in German)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Stzygowski, Josef
1862 births
1941 deaths
People from Biała
People from Austrian Silesia
19th-century Austrian people
20th-century Austrian people
Austrian art historians
Austrian architectural historians
Historians of Islamic art
Austrian people of Polish descent
Armenian studies scholars
Corresponding Fellows of the Medieval Academy of America
Historians of Byzantine art