Michael David Kighley Baxandall, FBA (18 August 1933 – 12 August 2008) was a British

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 ...

and a professor emeritus of Art History at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

. He taught at the Warburg Institute,

University of London The University of London (UoL; abbreviated as Lond or more rarely Londin in post-nominals) is a federal public research university located in London, England, United Kingdom. The university was established by royal charter in 1836 as a degree ...

, and worked as a curator at the

Victoria and Albert Museum The Victoria and Albert Museum (often abbreviated as the V&A) in London is the world's largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.27 million objects. It was founded in 1852 and nam ...

. His book ''Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy'' was profoundly influential in the social history of art, and is (2018) widely used as a textbook in college courses.

Career

Baxandall was born in

Cardiff Cardiff (; cy, Caerdydd ) is the capital and largest city of Wales. It forms a principal area, officially known as the City and County of Cardiff ( cy, Dinas a Sir Caerdydd, links=no), and the city is the eleventh-largest in the United Kingd ...

, the only son of David Baxandall, a curator who was at one time director of the National Gallery of Scotland. He went to Manchester Grammar School and studied English at

Downing College, Cambridge Downing College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge and currently has around 650 students. Founded in 1800, it was the only college to be added to Cambridge University between 1596 and 1869, and is often described as the olde ...

, where he was taught by

F. R. Leavis Frank Raymond "F. R." Leavis (14 July 1895 – 14 April 1978) was an English literary critic of the early-to-mid-twentieth century. He taught for much of his career at Downing College, Cambridge, and later at the University of York. Leavis ra ...

. In 1955 he departed for the Continent. He spent a year at Pavia University (1955–56), then taught at an international school in St. Gallen in Switzerland (1956–57), and finally went to Munich to hear the art historian Hans Sedlmayr and where he worked with

Ludwig Heinrich Heydenreich Ludwig Heinrich Heydenreich (born 23 March 1903 in Leipzig; died 14 September 1978 in Munich) was a German art historian specialized in Italian Renaissance art. From 1947 to 1970, he served as director of the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte, ...

on the court of Urbino at the

Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte The Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte (ZI; engl. ''Central Institute for Art History''), is an independent art-historical research institute in Germany. The institute resides in the former administration building of the National Socialist party ...

. On his return to London in 1958 he began a long association with the Warburg Institute, initially working in the photographic collection, where he met Kay Simon, whom he married in 1963. From 1959 to 1961 he was a junior fellow, working on his never-completed PhD, ''Restraint in Renaissance behaviour'', under

Ernst Gombrich Sir Ernst Hans Josef Gombrich (; ; 30 March 1909 – 3 November 2001) was an Austrian-born art historian who, after settling in England in 1936, became a naturalised British citizen in 1947 and spent most of his working life in the United Kin ...

. From 1961, he was Assistant Keeper in the Department of Architecture and Sculpture at the

, returning to the Warburg Institute in 1965 as lecturer in Renaissance Studies. He was appointed to a chair by the University of London in 1981, but increasingly spent his time in the United States. He was A. D. White Professor-at-Large at

Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to teach an ...

and became a half-time Professor of the History of Art at the

, in 1987. He was elected a Fellow of the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and ...

in 1991. He was Slade Professor of Fine Art at the

University of Oxford , mottoeng = The Lord is my light , established = , endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019) , budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20) , chancellor ...

for 1974–75.

Books

His book ''Giotto and the Orators'' was published in 1971. This was followed in 1972 by ''Painting and Experience in Fifteenth Century Italy'', now considered a classic of

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 ...

, in which he developed the influential concept of the

period eye The period eye is a concept that was devised by Michael Baxandall and described in his innovative ''Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy: A Primer in the Social History of Pictorial Style'', where he used it to describe the cultural co ...

. These were followed by ''The Limewood Sculptors of Renaissance Germany'' (1980), ''Patterns of Intention'' (1985), ''Tiepolo and the Pictorial Intelligence'' (1994, with Svetlana Alpers), ''Shadows and Enlightenment'' (1994) and ''Words for Pictures'' (2003). In all his work, Baxandall was concerned to illuminate artworks by a thorough exploration of the conditions of their production – intellectual, social, and physical. In ''Limewood Sculptors'' this took the form of using "carvings as lenses bearing on their own circumstances". Despite his impact in "social" art history, Baxandall often retreated from Marxist or overly "contextual" approaches. At one point, he declared that he was just "trying to do

Roger Fry Roger Eliot Fry (14 December 1866 – 9 September 1934) was an English painter and critic, and a member of the Bloomsbury Group. Establishing his reputation as a scholar of the Old Masters, he became an advocate of more recent developme ...

...in a different way," and he often cited the impact of Heinrich Wölfflin's book ''Classic Art.''Shone, Richard and Stonard, John-Paul, eds.. ''The Books That Shaped Art History: From Gombrich and Greenberg to Alpers and Krauss''. London: Thames & Hudson, 2013.

Death and legacy

Baxandall died in London from pneumonia associated with Parkinson's Disease. His concept of the ''period eye'' has continued to gain in importance since his death.

Publications

* ''Giotto and the Orators. Humanist observers of painting in Italy and the discovery of pictorial composition 1350-1450'', (1971),

Oxford University Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print books ...

. *''Painting and Experience in 15th century Italy'', (1972), (Oxford University Press). *''The Limewood Sculptors of Renaissance Germany'', (1980), (

Yale University Press Yale University Press is the university press of Yale University. It was founded in 1908 by George Parmly Day, and became an official department of Yale University in 1961, but it remains financially and operationally autonomous. , Yale Universi ...

) (paperback 1982). * ''Patterns of Intention: On the Historical Explanation of Pictures'', (1985). * ''Tiepolo and the Pictorial Intelligence'', (with Svetlana Alpers), (1994). * ''Shadows and Enlightenment'' (1995). * ''Words for Pictures'', (2003). * ''Episodes'', (2010), (Frances Lincoln Publishers Ltd). * ''A Grasp of Kaspar'', (2010), (Frances Lincoln Publishers Ltd).

References

External links