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Origins of the Survey Text Author(s): Mitchell Schwarzer Source: Art Journal, Vol. 54, No. 3, Rethinking the Introductory Art History Survey (Autumn, 1995), pp. 24-29 Published by: College Art Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/777579 . Accessed: 09/10/2014 16:09

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This content downloaded from 131.247.112.3 on Thu, 9 Oct 2014 16:09:47 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Origins of the Art HistorySurvey T xt

Mitchell Schwarzer

he universal and developmentalpresumptions of art The early survey texts represent the birth of a new history are nowhere better expressed than in the literarygenre of cardinal relevancefor the emergenceof the global surveytext. Morethan any othergenre within discipline of art history. Today, an examination of their the discipline, the survey text embodies the nineteenth- methods and assumptions tells us a great deal about the century vision of history to unify the art of the past into a standardsurvey texts of the twentiethcentury and helps us coherentand relevantstory for the present. In its rethink and reconsiderthe genre. 24 throughall five continents and over thousandsof years, the surveytext asks us to believe thatthe immeasurablediversity Pioneersof HistoricalContext of art can be broughttogether into a great chain of meaning. I begin with Winckelmann'sHistory of AncientArt (1764) The survey text is art history at its most grandiose, promis- because its contributionto the formationof visual connois- ing to reveal the complex truths of humanity through art. seurship in art history has been immense, its impact on the It is also art history at its most political, reducing cul- developmentof the survey text in Germanyequally momen- tural and individual differences to questionablehierarchies tous. Like GiorgioVasari, who narratedthe historyof art as a and generalities. developmentalmovement of style towardperfection (in his Some of the earliest attemptsto position art on a vast case, ),Winckelmann conducted the historyof developmentalscale occurred in nineteenth-centuryGer- from the achievements of fifth-century B.C. many.They followed Johann Joachim Winckelmann's ground- . To describe the penultimatemeaning of classical breakinghistory of the art of antiquityand GustavFriedrich for eighteenth-century Europeans, he laid out a Waagen'sand CarlFriedrich Rumohr's contextual histories of three-stagedevelopmental pattern for all worldart: (1) neces- artists. During the 1840s and 1850s, the first sity, (2) progress towardperfect beauty, and (3) decay into survey texts that can truly be called global were writtenby superfluity.3 FranzTheodor Kugler, Carl Schnaase, and AntonSpringer. In most other ways Winckelmanndiffers greatly from Alongsidephilosophers like GeorgWilhelm FriedrichHegel Vasari. Already in the prefaceto TheHistory ofAncient Art, and political historians like Leopold von Ranke, these art he was adamantthat his art historydepart from mere chroni- historiansdiscovered the meaning of their own time through cles of epochs or histories of individual artists. A decisive connectionswith the whole of . Their surveys contributionby Winckelmannto the art history survey text tell us about the constructionof historyaccording to ideas of was his attentionto the contextualfactors (i.e., climate) that progress and linearity, and the division of world culture underlay beauty in . Rarely mentioned are the throughrankings of artistic quality. names of individual artists. Nations are what matter.They The early surveytexts were part of a greaterstruggle to are the discrete examples of the universal potentialof art to create modernGerman identity. They were anythingbut an move within its three stages.4 isolated, academic endeavor.Quite unlike the commonplace Because the complete historical progressionof art oc- use of the art history survey text for universityeducation in curredwithin Greece, Winckelmanndid not write global art the twentiethcentury, the surveytexts were writtenin an era history. He believed that the moved in great when there were no universityart historydepartments. They cycles, whose rotationfrom Egypt to was fully repre- had were intended for the educated public--scholars, artists, sented in the art of antiquity. The , for instance, travelers-and especially cultural officials and art'sadmin- once had an Egyptian-like period, and by the time of the late istrators.It is likely that the survey texts were first used for Roman emperors, classical art had reached its last stage, universityteaching only a generationlater, after 1871. Not where the meritof consisted solely in elaboration. surprisingly, none of the texts I discuss were writtenwhile Mostconspicuously absent fromWinckelmann's text is any of their authorsheld university professorships.2 the art of after the RomanEmpire.5 It was not until

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This content downloaded from 131.247.112.3 on Thu, 9 Oct 2014 16:09:47 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 1822, with the appearance of Waagen's On Hubert and Johannvan Eyck, thatan attemptwas madeto understandthe art of from within its own medieval context.6Like Winckelmann,Waagen pointed out the major failure of the new art historyof the nineteenthcentury as that of not observing the connectionsbetween artistic worksand their completeera and place.' He recommendedthat in order to understandan artist, arthistorians should discuss political history,the constitution,the characterof a people, conditions of the and the nature of the church, customs, literature, e A land." They must also pay great attention to the artist's historical and psychologicalbackground: his place of birth, conditionsof growingup, and influences on his thought. To understandthe van Eyckbrothers, Waagen's text was divided into three parts: (1)a generalhistory of the ;(2) a FIG.1 AfterTitian, Virgin and Childwith Saints Ulfo and Brigida,wood engraving;from FranzKugler, Handbook of Painting:The Italian School from Carolingiantimes to the time of the (London:John Murray, 1887), frontispiece. van Eycks; and (3) a specific analysis of the brothersand their artworks.9 Waagen'sanalysis of great artistic achievements in light of the artworksof the past foreshadowsthe global art task of art history as that of educating and civilizing the 25 historysurvey text. Stronglyinfluenced by FriedrichSchlegel generalpublic. This goal was exemplifiedby their theoretical and the Romantics,Waagen conceived the GermanicMiddle contributionsto the first design for a public art museum in Ages as an underpinningfor the classical tendencies of the Europe,Karl FriedrichSchinkel's Altes Museum(1824-30) Early Renaissance.'0 The creationof oil paintingby Jan van in .16The museum took the form of an incipient art Eyckwas neitheran isolated occurrencenor an act of individ- historical survey text. The picture galleries, in particular, ual genius outside of historical inheritance.It was a creative signaled how the arrangement of artists within national synthesis of the and and schools can demonstratethe developmentof art over the represented to Waagen nothing less than the birth of the centuries. The art museum and the survey text convergeto modern European sensibility." Earlier, Schlegel had pro- the extent that both seek to constructmodern consciousness posed a union of ancientand modern.His theoryis contained fromspecific configurationsof historical change. in the Dialogue on Poetry (1799), where he wrote: "In the history of art one block of material is only explained and The GlobalSurvey Texts clarified in the light of another."l2All art, ancient and In 1842 Kuglerbegan his Handbookof Art History,with the medieval, is part of an endless chain, never completed claim that his was the very first comprehensivesurvey of and always striving forward. art.17In its temporaland geographicscope, at the veryleast, Rumohr's Italian Investigations (1827) shares in Kugler'sclaim is probablytrue.18 Beginning with a lengthy Waagen'sRomantic concern to explain the meaning of art discussion of the origins of art in raw,material needs, he told throughhistorical chains. Rumohrheld the principlegoal of the history of art as a great linear narrativeculminating in the art historian to be an objective analysis such that inter- the art historical debates of his own day. By virtue of its connectionsregarding the style and methodof a great artist division of the history of worldart into four great periods- were better understood. What matteredmost were the rea- (1) art in its earliest developmentalstages, (2) classical art, sons that artists achieved perfectvisual essence: that perfec- (3) romantic (i.e., medieval) art, and (4) - tion emergingwhen an artist achieved a balance of percep- Kugler established the standard sequence for survey texts tion, or truth to nature, and representation,or originality."3 well into the twentiethcentury (fig. 1).19 This condition Rumohr found in , with whom he Going much furtherthan earlier art historians in his consequentlyoriented and concludedhis entire survey. But, searchfor historical roots, Kuglerestablished the basis forall rather than condemn Raphael's distant predecessors as notionsof art and beauty in the early art of northernEurope Vasarihad done, Rumohrargued that Raphael'sgrand style (the Celts), the islands of the great oceans, and the pre- representedthe culminationof the powersof perfect artistic ColumbianAmericas. His history is also more globalizing representationbegun many centuries earlier.'14 because of its Hegelian and idealist theory of art as the Even though Rumohrwas stronglycritical of Hegelian corporeal representationof the life of the spirit.20 As he , he believed in the importance of groundingthe wrote:"The origins of art lie in the needs of men to tie their of the Renaissance in a historical and cultural thoughtsto permanentmatter, to create a monumentalform context.'" BothRumohr and Waagenenvisioned the principal and place formemories as the expressionof their thoughts."21

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FIG.2 AfterHorsemen, from the friezeof the ,wood engraving;from Carl Schnaase, Geschichte der bildenden Kiinste, 8 vols. (Diisseldorf:Julius Buddeus, 1866), 2:213.

Art, verymuch in the sense of eighteenth-centuryaesthetics, mantic theorists like Schlegel, articulatingthe relationship is a lofty activity. In Kugler'sand most subsequent survey between Greek antiquityand the GermanMiddle Ages now texts, the arts associated with necessity (and peasant cul- became a principal theme of the survey text. ture) were strategically rendered as early developmental About the same time, Schnaase had begun his own phases within art's global evolutionaryscheme. global survey of art (fig. 2). His eight-volumeHistory of the In breaking with Hegel's march to the end of history Fine Arts (1842-79) embodies the Hegelian desire to writea and the end of art, however,Kugler also advocatedartistic historyof art as a historyof the mentalityof the humanrace, formalism.More like Ranke, he attemptedto narratea global an endeavorspecifically disavowedby Kugler.Indeed, in an historyof art througha study of its objective particularsand 1843 reviewof the first volumeof Schnaase's survey, Kugler not a single underlyingprinciple. 22 Kuglerbegan with Celtic spent a great deal of effortin differentiatingtheir positions. grave monuments,proceeded to Egypt, and then to India. Schnaase, he claimed, expandedeach art historical moment Here he detected a higher,though imperfect, stage of artistic into great cultural generalizationsof a Hegelian nature.26 expression: "an effective and lively organicism."23But if Whereas Kuglersaw his handbookas providinga useful tool Egyptian art remainedhard and incapableof expressingthe forstudying artistic monuments,he foundSchnaase's to be an inner developmentof man, too was plagued by overblownexcursion into the relationshipbetween art and problems: a glut of imagination. Echoing Winckelmann, world-historicalmeaning.27 Kugler felt that only in Greece was antique perfection Paradoxically,Schnaase's survey is less global than achieved.24 Kugler's.28Schnaase's dialectic found no space to discuss A great differencebetween Kuglerand Winckelmann those peoples who did not help to explain the overalldevelop- was the former'shigh regardfor . Especially in mental course (Entwicklungsgang)of art: the of the period of the germanischenStyles (Gothic age), Kugler northernEurope or the ancient Americas. What is more, perceived a crucial "spiritualizationof the earthlyworld."25 Schnaase began his text with a lengthy discussion on philo- Despite the fact that the medieval striving towarda higher, sophical .29 Art expressed both the spiritual and transcendental reality was the opposite of Greece's sensual sides of man: if "the tasks of beauty emerge in the Sinnesrichtung-the preoccupationwith earthly corporeal innerlife of man, this liberationcan only be accomplishedin forms-Kugler portrayedGreek and medieval as the two the world of external appearances."'30While embodying poles of perfect artistic expression. As it had been for Ro- Hegel's synoptic vision for the arts and overall culture,

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This content downloaded from 131.247.112.3 on Thu, 9 Oct 2014 16:09:47 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions however, Schnaase never subordinated the physical or visual side of art to inner spirit as did Hegel. Still, religious context was deeply important for Schnaase. Influenced by the Berlin legal theorist Friedrich Carl von Savigny, Schnaase developed a concept of the peo- ple's spirit (der Volksgeistbegriff) as the leading motive behind his proposed unity between people and religion, cul- ture and and art and Each individual nation, history.3' "oe, artist possesses a spiritual heritage, traditions, and most importantly, a national consciousness (Volksgeist). Like Winckelmann, Schnaase focused on national artistic tradi- tions and not on individuals. But in arguing the interrelation- ship of all historical peoples within a global scheme, 44.k ti Schnaase added that the individuality of any people is heavily dependent upon the spiritual traditions inherited from -4ki other peoples.32 Although he readily proclaimed that the Greeks were the first people to express successfully the artistic impulse, Schnaase saved his greatest enthusiasm for Christian art: 27 "that merger of Christianity with the Germanic peoples."33 A second great blossoming of the arts commenced with the Romanesque period. Thus, only the pagan Greeks and medi- eval Christians express the absolute rule of the spirit.34 Art Ilk . history, for Schnaase, as with Kugler, was a cyclical story of the movements between the Greek and the medieval world views.35 Unlike Vasari and Winckelmann, who professed a single true style for art, both Kugler and Schnaase under- stood art history as a repeated dialectical encounter of two valid tendencies. For them, modern Euro- FIG. 3 AfterMartin Schongauer, Christ on the Cross,wood engraving;from equally stylistic CarlSchnaase, Geschichte der bildendenKuinste im 16. Jahrhundert(Stuttgart: pean art was the result of complex historical cross- Ebnerund Seubert, 1879), 398. fertilizations between Latin and medieval Ger- manic Christianity (fig. 3). Already during the second half of the nineteenth cen- tury, a reaction to idealism and the growth in esteem of the natural sciences combined to reorient art historiography toward form and object.36 Perhaps the most influential new world, extending from the study of geologic formations to the survey texts of this type were written by Springer. Springer organicism of human individualism. saw art history as a discipline distinguished not by its This new emphasis led Springer to attempt a more form methods but by its objects and was highly critical of the focused analysis of art history than Kugler or certainly method-laden texts of Kugler and especially Schnaase.37 In Schnaase. In his survey's later versions, the Textbookfor the place of what he regarded as dubious religious and cultural Art Historical Image Collection (1879) and the Handbook of connections, Springer advocated a formal knowledge of de- Art History, Springer recommended in place of die G6t- tails (Detailkenntnis), a total reconstruction of an artwork terideale [the ideals of ] factual studies of ornamentation without the dreams of world-historical evolution. 38 and the means by which the fine arts emerged from hand- Why then did Springer write global art history surveys? work.41 The art history survey promised to teach the develop- In his second survey text, Art Historical Letters: The Fine Arts ment not of the human race and mind, but of the more Considered in Their WorldHistorical Development (1857), he restricted traditions of artistic technique and style. It should included a lengthy discussion of art historical methodology, be practical and primarily serve the student of art and the omitted from later surveys.39 While accepting Schnaase's world traveler. Furthermore, by eschewing such totalizing position that artistic nations endow the content of history, aims, Springer began a trend toward evaluating individual Springer questioned reliance on notions like the Volksgeist.40 artistic peoples for their own contributions.42 For instance, in Agreeing with Ranke and Savigny, Springer thought that referring to Egypt, he disavowed Kugler and Schnaase's global history was too complex to be based upon abstract notion of its absolute stasis [der absoluten Unverdinderlichkeit] speculation alone. It encompassed the whole of the sensate for a study of the ways in which Egyptian art changed.

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This content downloaded from 131.247.112.3 on Thu, 9 Oct 2014 16:09:47 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Springer's survey texts influenced the subsequent The leading aim of the survey texts was to demonstrate global survey texts in several important ways.43 Through a the possibility of recreating a high artistic culture for reduction to forms, he placed greater emphasis on arraying nineteenth-century . For Kugler, Schnaase, images in strict chronological order and attending to all and Springer alike, was to be seen as the world-historical peoples. Secondly, the meaning of art and culmination of complex, yet structured paths of historical artistic forms was reduced to the interrelationships between transmission. Their texts were intended as proof of this fact. artworks themselves and not the contextual discourses of In the case of , moreover, writing art history on a religion, politics, or environment favored by many of global scale cannot be distinguished from nation building. Springer's predecessors. Finally, by eliminating from later The texts discussed in this essay exhibit a striking affection editions all methodological aims, Springer proposed the fic- for and medieval Germanic Christianity. tion of the art historian as the scientific assembler of objec- Their moralizing tone was intended to inspire belief that tive facts. The formal images contained within the global modern and culture was the child of an inspired history, he implied, will speak the meaning of the history of marriage of Hellenic and Christian theology: that the world art themselves. Illustrations from this point on, and not Romantic German artist was a form-making and sacred conceptual arguments, would constitute the structure of the genius. art history survey text. To a large extent the aims and narrative features of this literature were adopted by twentieth-century survey writers in the United States, a of whom were of German LastCall for the great many Survey? The 28 origin. popular surveys written by Janson, Hartt, The early art history survey texts can be divided between Gardner, and Gombrich, among others, echo the developmen- contextual and formalist methods. Whereas the former set tal lineage and elitist aesthetic sensibilities of their were guided by a higher, a priori order of art located in God or nineteenth-century predecessors. Without doubt, these the subjective human spirit, the latter were descriptive and American art historians gradually eliminated many of the internally focused on art. This division centered on the hierarchical, inter-national overtones of the nineteenth- question of how much extraformal context to include in the century survey. The result, however, is that of an incoherent survey text, an issue that has persisted to the present day. formalism, wholly lacking the consistent point of view of Should the survey text, according to Schnaase, primarily nineteenth-century authors. invoke the pervasive relationships of art to other human In a postmodern world characterized by aesthetic rela- activities? Or should the survey, as Springer would have it, tivism and cultural pluralism, the genre of the survey text contribute to world history by limiting its point of reference to has obviously become problematic. How can new survey texts art forms themselves? eschew notions of trans-historical structure, inter-national Beyond this difference, all the texts we have considered hierarchies, and universal values for art and perfect beauty shared a belief in the global significance of artistic develop- and still maintain coherence? But does ceasing to write ment. The developmental steps leading to and away from any global surveys of the old kind suggest a regime of artistic individual artist were crucial to understanding that artist and equivalences too much in tune with the unrelenting random- the overall makeup of the arts over the course of history. ness of postmodern culture? Do we need the survey's laby- Common as well to each chronological tracking mechanism rinth of fantastic ruins and gigantic as a foil to our was a belief in the restricted scope of perfect art and beauty. increasingly immutable groundedness? Although the surveys gradually included more and more artistic periods as a result of ongoing art historical and Notes archaeological investigations, they all proclaimed restricted 1. On the history of German art history during the early nineteenth century, see Heinrich Dilly, Kunstgeschichteals Institution:Studien zur Geschichteeiner Disziplin eras of artistic perfection. (Frankfurt:Suhrkamp, 1979), 173-258. This concept of perfection promoted hierarchy, both 2. During the 1820s and 1830s, Waagenwas director of the Berlin Gemdildegalerie, the first chair of art at the of Berlin in 1844. Rumohr over time and in to national culture. The arts of becoming history University only regard remainedfor his whole life an importantart critic and advisor to museums in Berlin Oceania, Africa, Asia, and the Americas served as the and . Kugler, who studied at the University of Berlin and the also never held a as a foundation stones for the of forms of Allgemeine Bauschule, university professorship,acting promi- development higher nent advocatefor the arts in Prussian cultural circles. Schnaase, who also studied at artistic expression in Europe. They were preparatory, flawed the University of Berlin, became an advisor for the arts in Dusseldorf in 1829 and returned to Berlin in 1848 for a who stages along the route toward artistic culmination in classical eventually governmentpost. Finally, Springer, habilitatedin Bonn in 1852, only became a professorof art historyat the Universityof Greece, medieval Christianity, and modern Europe (as the Leipzig in 1873. combination of both). Consequently, non-European art was 3. JohannJoachim Winckelmann,History of AncientArt, trans. AlexanderGode, 2 vols. (New York:Frederick Ungar, 1969), 1:29. Winckelmannfelt that while otherart almost completely excluded from the later and crucial stages (in this case, Egyptian or Etruscan)may enlarge our ideas of beauty, only Greek art is of art historical development. Only Islam was granted higher based on the idea of truth. 4. Ibid., 1:35. and then because of its substantial inheritance status, only 5. Winckelmannignored and occasionally, in the case of Michelangeloand Bernini, from Rome and Byzantium. condemnedthe profounddevelopment of artistic individualism in the Europeanlands

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This content downloaded from 131.247.112.3 on Thu, 9 Oct 2014 16:09:47 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions after the Middle Ages. As much as Giovan Pietro Bellori, he strongly opposed the (including Stonehenge), it ends with English animal and landscape painters of the artistic excesses of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. nineteenth century. 6. Anotherimportant history of the era is J. B. L. G. Serouxd'Agincourt, Histoire de 22. Kugler,Handbuch der Kunstgeschichte, 5. l'artpar les monuments:Depuis sa dcadence au IVesi'clejusqu'a son renouvellementau 23. Ibid., 36. XIVe(Paris: Treuffelet Wirth, 1823). 24. China, interestingly, was writtenoff by Kugleras sufferingfrom a very unpleas- 7. GustavFriedrich Waagen, UeberHubertundJohann VanEyck (Breslau: Josef Max, ing figuration. Unlike Winckelmann, Kugler described as overly con- 1822), 25. cerned with necessity and practicality. Whereas art ruled life in Greece, art was the 8. Waagenmentioned that JohannDominicus Fiorillo, the first professorof art history servant of life in Rome. at a Germanuniversity (1813, in G6ttingen), already spoke of the importancefor art 25. Kugler,Handbuch der Kunstgeschichte, 515. historians to understandpolitical history. 26. FranzKugler, Kleine Schriften zur Kunstgeschichte,3 vols. (Stuttgart:Ebner und 9. Waagen, UeberHubert und Johann VanEyck, 26. Seubert, 1854), 2:437. 10. At the same time, Leopold von Ranke's Histories of the Romanticand Germanic 27. Kugler,Handbuch der Kunstgeschichte, 481. Kuglerfelt that the predecessor for Peoplesfrom1494 to 1514 (Berlin, 1824) arguedthat the peoples northand south of the Schnaase was Amadeus Wendt, Ueberdie Hauptperiodender schinen Kunst;oder, die Alps evolved in unity and kindred movement. See also idem, "Preface to the First Kunst im Laufe der Weltgeschichte(Leipzig: J. A. Barth, 1831). Editionof Histories of the Latin and GermanicNations," in Rolf Siltzer, ed., German 28. Schnaase's survey proceeds in the following order: (1) India, Babylonia and Essays on History (New York:Continuum, 1991), 88-90. Assyria, Persia, and the Hebrews, Egypt; (2) Greece, Etruria, and Rome; 11. Waagen's achievement and the future conditions for a history of art, writes (3) beginning of Christian-Germanic art, the Dark Ages, Byzantium, Armenia/ Gabriele Bickendorf, was grounded in the theoretical writings of the Romantics. Georgia/Russia, Islam, Carolingian; (4) Germanic Romanesque; (5) Germanic Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroderand LudwigTieck saw art in a theological sense, as Gothic; (6) to Johannvan Eyck; (7) Italian, Spanish, and Northern an opening to God. Later, August Wilhelm Schlegel turned this revelation into a EuropeanMiddle Ages; and (8) fifteenth century, ending with Brunelleschi. natural history of art, a language of visual forms, so to speak. Finally, Friedrich 29. Like Hegel, Schnaase considered the to be lowermanifestations of the Schlegel described this language of artworksas carriers of historical meaning much possibility forart to speak of the essence of things. Schnaase'sextensive methodology like texts. The developmentof an idea of a language of artistic forms providedthe was strongly criticized in a review by Gustav Friedrich Waagen, "Geschichte der groundingfor later approachesto the whole of art history. Gabriele Bickendorf,Der bildenden Kiinste von Carl Schnaase," Jahrbiicherfiir wissenschaftlicheKritik 1, Beginn der Kunstgeschichtsschreibungunter dem Paradigma "Geschichte":Gustav nos. 116-20 (1844): 922. Such criticisms may have led future art historians to leave Friedrich Waagens Friihschrift "Ueber Hubert und Johann van Ecyk" (Worms: out large methodologicaldiscussions at the beginning of their texts. Wernersche,1985), 191-92. 30. Carl Schnaase, Geschichte der bildendenKiinste, 8 vols. (Diisseldorf: Julius 29 12. Friedrich Schlegel, Dialogue on Poetry and LiteraryAphorisms, trans. Ernst Buddeus, 1866-76), 1:5. Behler and RomanStruc (UniversityPark, Pa.: PennsylvaniaState UniversityPress, 31. Gregor Stemmrich, "C. Schnaase: Rezeption und TransformationBerlinischen 1968), 107. Geistes in der kunsthistorischen Forschung," in Otto Pdggeler and Annemarie 13. GertSchiff, introductionto GermanEssays on ArtHistory (New York:Continuum, Gethmann-Siefert,eds., Kunsterfahrungund Kulturpolitikin Berlin Hegels (Bonn: 1988), xxviii. Bouvier, 1983), 244-45. 14. Carl FriedrichRumohr, Italienische Forschungen,3 vols. (Berlin: Nicolai'schen, 32. Schnaase, Geschichteder bildendenKiinste, 1:48. 1827), 1:84. 33. Ibid., 4:493. 15. The ItalienischeForschungen are divided into three parts: (1) a methodologyfor 34. Ibid., 1:50. art historyas well as an analysis of the meaning of art fromthe time of the Dark Ages 35. Despite the text's great length Schnaase was unable to complete his survey. to the thirteenth century; (2) the developmentof Italian art between and the Presumably,although equal weight should have been given to the Greek conceptionof beginning of the fifteenth century; and (3) Raphael and his contemporaries. art, five books were taken up by a discussion of art from early Christianityand the 16. Theodore Ziolkowski, German and Its Institutions (Princeton: Dark Ages [Zeit des Verfalls]to the fifteenth century. It is possible that Schnaase Princeton University Press, 1990), 318-19. ended his survey at the beginning of the Renaissance because of the appearance of 17. The representationof the historyof art as a worlddevelopment was first set forthby Jacob Burckhardt'sequally contextualbooks on as well as in light of Hegel. He depicted a global history of art reaching from Egypt to modernEurope, the areligious attitudes of the modernera. whose formalchanges were characterizedby the permutationsof the emergentworld 36. It should be remembered that attacks were also made on Schnaase's mode of spirit. In 1835 the lectures were collected and edited for publication by the art speculation fromart historians concerned with the relationshipsof art to broadsocial historian Heinrich Gustav Hotho. The English translation-Hegel's Aesthetics:Lec- circumstances. For an analysis of the differences between Schnaase and Jacob tures on , trans. T. M. Knox (Oxford:, 1975)-is Burckhardt, see Ernst Heidrich, Beitrdge zur Geschichte und Methode der based on Hotho'ssecond edition of 1838. Kunstgeschichte(Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1917), 50-81. 18. The preface to Wilhelm Liibke's later survey text attributed to Kugler the first 37. WolfgangBeyrodt, "Kunstgeschichteals Universitditsfach,"in PeterGanz, Mar- traverseof the whole grand field of art and representationof it in a distinct outline. tin Gosebruch, Nikolaus Meier, and Martin Warnke, eds., Kunst und Kunsttheorie, Liibke also credited Schnaase with the first connection of art to the innermostlife of 1400-1900 (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1991), 319. The details of Springer's art and historical epochs. Wilhelm Liibke, HistoryofArt, trans. E E. Bunnett, 2 vols. anti-idealist position are contained in, "Die Hegel'sche Geschichtsanschauung" (London:Smith, Elder, 1869), 1:v. (Ph.D. diss., Universityof Ttibingen, 1848). 19. Kugler'sfour great stages of art are as follows: (1) the beginning of art in the 38. Nikolaus Meier, "Kunstgeschichteund Kulturgeschichteoder Kunstgeschichte northernlands of Europe, islands of the great oceans, America, Egypt and Nubia, nach Aufgaben"in Kunst und Kunsttheorie,319-20. WestAsia, East Asia; (2) Greece, Rome; (3) Early Christian and Byzantium, Islam, 39. Springer'sfirst Handbuchder Kunstgeschichteappeared in 1853. Romanesque, Gothic (germanischen);and (4) Europe from the fourteenthto nine- 40. Anton Heinrich Springer,Kunsthistorische Briefe: Die bildendenKiinste in ihrer teenth centuries. In the 1860s Liibke'sHistory of Art used the exact same format:(1) weltgeschichtlichenEntwicklung (Prague: FriedrichEhrlich, 1857), 5-6. ancient art of the East; (2) classic art; (3) Middle Ages; and (4) moderntimes. In its 41. Anton Springer, Textbuchzu den kunsthistorischenBilderbogen, 2d ed. (Leipzig: later editions, Springer's Handbuch derKunstgeschichte added greater emphasis to the E. A. Seemann, 1881), 4-5. modern era by combining all of antiquity and splitting up Renaissance and post- 42. In 1908 Alois Riegl distinguished between those historians like Springer,who Renaissance: (1) antiquity; (2) the Middle Ages; (3) the Renaissance in ; and (4) favored comprehending the singularity of artworks (Spezialuntersuchung) and those the Northern Renaissance and the art of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. like Schnaase, who were captivated by the so-called impulses that connected single Springer's division was essentially repeated in H. W. Janson, History ofArt: A Survey works into great chains (universalen Darstellung). See Alois Riegl, "Kunstgeschichte of the MajorVisual Arts from the Dawn of Time to the PresentDay (EnglewoodCliffs, und Universalgeschichte" in Gesammelte Aufsiitze (Augsburg: Benno Filser, 1929), 8. N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1962): (1) ancient; (2) Middle Ages; (3) Renaissance; and (4) 43. Many later surveys followed Springer's formal method. For instance, Karl Woer- modern. Although Janson omitted almost all non-Western art, he did begin his survey mann disavowed any spiritual, world-historical, economic, or aesthetic teachings. with a chapter titled "Magic and Ritual," which included primitive art. See Karl Woermann, Geschichte der Kunst aller Zeiten und Volker, 6 vols. (Leipzig: 20. In The Philosophy ofHistory, Hegel had characterized art as the striving over time Bibliographisches Institut, 1905). to realize a sensate representation of the world spirit. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, The Philosophy of History, trans. J. Sibree (New York: Wiley Book, 1944), 49-54. 21. Franz Theodor Kugler, Handbuch der Kunstgeschichte (Stuttgart: Ebner und Seubert, 1842), 3. Unillustrated, later editions of Kugler's text were accompanied by an atlas of images. See Joseph Caspar and Wilhelm Libke, Monuments ofArt Showing MITC HELL SCH WAR Z ER is assistant professor in the Its Developmentand Progressfrom the Earliest ArtisticAttempts to the PresentPeriod, Departmentof Art History, University of Illinois at Chicago. . 2 vols. (New York: Theo Stroefer, n.d. Interestingly, the editors broke up Kugler's He wrote German Architectural Theory and the Search for fourth great era-"Modern Art"--into two periods: "Modern Art" and "Art of the Present Time." Where the image atlas begins with Celtic and Nordic monuments ModernIdentity (Cambridge, 1995).

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