The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (516 page)

(1901–71)
. German-born art historian who became a British citizen in 1934. He studied in Berlin, then worked at the Biblioteca Hertziana in Rome from 1923 to 1933. From 1934 to 1956 he was on the staff of the
Warburg
Institute in London and from 1949 to 1956 was also professor of history of art at University College, London. In 1956 he moved to Columbia University, New York, as head of the Department of Fine Arts and Archaeology, which under his direction became one of the leading centres of art historical scholarship in the USA. After he retired in 1969 he was
Kress
Professor at the National Gallery in Washington and
Slade
Professor at Cambridge. Wittkower's many books and articles were devoted mainly to Italian art and architecture of the 16th and 17th cents., and his writings form one of the cornerstones in the study of Italian
Baroque
art. His major books, several of which have appeared in revised editions, include:
Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism
(1949),
Gian Lorenzo Bernini
(1955),
Art and Architecture in Italy:
1600–1750 (1958),
Sculpture
(1977), and (with his wife
Margot Wittkower
)
Born under Saturn: The Character and Conduct of Artists
(1963).

 
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(
c.
1400–44/6)
. German-born painter from Rottweil in Swabia, active in Switzerland and generally considered a member of the Swiss school. He entered the painters' guild in Basle in 1434 and apparently spent the rest of his career there and in Geneva. Little else is known of him and few paintings by him survive. These few, however, show that he was remarkably advanced in his
naturalism
, suggesting a knowledge of the work of his contemporaries Jan van
Eyck
and the
Master of Flémalle
. In place of the soft lines and lyrical qualities of
International Gothic
we find in Witz's work heavy, almost stumpy, figures, whose ample draperies emphasize their solidity. Witz's most famous works are the four surviving panels (forming two wings) from the altarpiece of St Peter he painted for the cathedral in Geneva. These are now in the Musée d'Art et d'Histoire there; the central panel is lost. One of the panels, the
Miraculous Draught of Fishes
, is Witz's masterpiece and his only signed and dated work (1444). The landscape setting depicts part of Lake Geneva (one of the earliest recognizable landscapes in art) and Witz's naturalism is even more remarkable in his observation of reflection and refraction in the water.

 
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(1864–1945)
. Swiss art historian, professor at the universities of Basle (1893–1901), Berlin (1901–12), Munich (1912–24), and Zurich (1924–34). He was one of the most influential art historians of his period, and several of his books are still widely read. They include
Die klassische Kunst
(Classic Art, 1899), on the art of the High
Renaissance
,
Kunstgeschichtliche Grundbegriffe
(Principles of Art History, 1915), and a monograph on
Dürer
(1905). Most of his work was devoted to stylistic analysis, and he attempted to show that style—in painting, sculpture, and architecture—follows evolutionary principles.
Principles of Art History
presents his ideas in the most completely developed form, discussing the transformation from
Renaissance
to
Baroque
in terms of contrasting visual schemes—for example the development from linear to painterly (‘malerisch’). Wölfflin's view that style was a force in its own right rather than an intellectual abstraction and his lack of interest in
iconography
are out of tune with much modern thinking on art history, and his approach is often over-rigid; however, he was a figure of great importance in establishing his subject as an intellectually demanding discipline. Herbert
Read
wrote: ‘it could be said of him that he found art criticism a subjective chaos and left it a science.’

 
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(1434–1519)
. German painter and woodcut designer, active in his native Nuremberg. In 1472 he married the widow of Hans
Pleydenwurff
and took over his workshop, the most prosperous in the city. It produced numerous large altarpieces in which there is little sign of a distinctive individual personality, and Wolgemut is more important for his book illustrations. Amongst many other books he illustrated was Hartman Schedel's
Weltchronik
(1493), the most enterprising attempt of its time at combining letterpress with woodcut illustration. Hitherto woodcuts had often been embellished by
illumination
, but Wolgemut tried to refine the technique of woodcut so that it could achieve its own proper effects without hand painting. His pupils included
Dürer
.

 
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(1913–51).
German-born painter active mainly in France. He went to Paris in 1932, where he earned a living by photography under the name Wols. He was interned at the outbreak of war but liberated in 1940 and lived in poverty in the south of France. On the termination of war he returned to Paris and was befriended by the writers Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir , for whom he did illustrations. In the late 1940s he began to make a name for himself as a painter, but his irregular life, poverty, and excessive drinking undermined his health and he died in 1951. His posthumous fame far outstripped his reputation during his lifetime and he came to be regarded as the ‘primitive’ of
Art Informel
and one of the great original masters of expressive abstraction. His work had an important influence on the
Tachiste
art of the late 1940s and 1950s.