DU1723 Historiography of art history

Faculty of Arts
Spring 2025
Extent and Intensity
2/0/0. 4 credit(s). Type of Completion: zk (examination).
Teacher(s)
prof. PhDr. Jiří Kroupa, CSc. (lecturer)
Guaranteed by
prof. PhDr. Jiří Kroupa, CSc.
Department of Art History – Faculty of Arts
Contact Person: prof. PhDr. Jiří Kroupa, CSc.
Supplier department: Department of Art History – Faculty of Arts
Course Enrolment Limitations
The course is offered to students of any study field.
Course objectives
"To know and define a discipline means first of all to know its history": the classic words of Auguste Comte will help us explain the content of the historiography course. Art history is still a relatively young discipline that is changing both methodologically and thematically. The aim is therefore to first: take the listener into the history of literature on architecture, sculpture and painting. Afterwards, it will be shown how a new, narrower discipline of art history was formed from this wider literature about art. And finally: how the methods and approaches of this new discipline changed from the end of the 19th century to 1945.
Learning outcomes
The student will be able after the lecture course
- to orientate him in the history of art history and read the original art historical literature;
- to acquire knowledge of various art historical approaches in history;
- to understand the historical transformation of seeing the artworks.
Syllabus
  • Introduction to the course
  • 1. The art of art history: literature on art and the systematic versus historical viewpoint.
  • 2. Transformations of art history: Lives of artists / Schools of art history / Methods of art history / Modalities of creation and creative strategies, mediators - meanings.
  • I. Literature on art
  • 3. Literature on architecture, sculpture and painting in antiquity: rhetoric, poetics and recipes, topography, ekphrasis, the history of art as a history of innovation (Pliny the Elder).
  • 4. Literature on architecture, sculpture and painting in the Middle Ages: liberal arts, regulations and recipes, topography.
  • 5. The new concept of "art" and Florentine humanism: "uomini famosi", mirabilia, from recipes to art theory (Cennino Cennini - Leone Bat. Alberti - Leonardo da Vinci).
  • II. The origin of art history and the emergence of a professional discipline
  • 6. The concept of artistic progress in the 16th century: Giorgio Vasari and his biographies: his predecessors; his successors, critics and followers.
  • 7. Biographies at the end of the 17th century between the Idea and the Academy: academic treatises; art criticism in Rome and Paris / Perspectives of art history (Giov. Pietro Bellori versus Giov. Batt. Passeri - Filippo Baldinucci contra Carlo Cesare Malvasia).
  • 8. The origin of art history in Italy and France in the 18th century: curieux, erudite and ciceroni / The first reviews of art history (Luigi Lanzi, Leopoldo Cicognara, Johann Dominik Fiorillo).
  • III. Creating art history "from below"
  • 9. Art history "begins twice": (a) Johann Joachim Winckelmann, Jean B. Séroux d'Agincourt - (b) Karl Friedrich von Rumohr, Gustav Fr. Waagen, Stendhal.
  • 10. Berlin School of Art History (Franz Kugler, Friedrich Eggers and Deutsches Kunstblatt, Wilhelm Lübke - Carl Schnaase, Heinrich Hotho and Hegel's aesthetics).
  • 11. Expertise as a prerequisite for the discipline of "art history": the controversy over Holbein in 1871; expertise and science (Giovanni Morelli, Wilhelm Bode, Gustav Dehio and his lists of monuments).
  • IV. Art history in the last quarter of the 19th century and its scientific method
  • 12. Determinism and positivism after the middle of the 19th century: Hippolyte Taine and the "milieu" - Anton Springer and historical science - Gottfries Semper and style, technique and material - Giovanni Morelli and the paradigm of indicia.
  • 13. Vienna School of Art History: Rudolf Eitelberger von Edelberg – Moritz Thausing; Alois Riegl – Franz Wickhoff; Max Dvořák – Julius von Schlosser; their counterpart: Josef Strzygowsky.
  • 14. Art and the interpretation of form: August Schmarsow (aesthetics), Bernard Berenson, Max Jacob Friedländer (connoisseurship), Wilhelm von Bode (museum) and Henri Focillon (life of forms).
  • V. History of art and the "universe of artistic creation" 15. The double root of style: Jacob Burckhardt and art history according to tasks, Heinrich Wölfflin and the basic concepts of art history, Adolph Goldschmidt and connoisseurship.
  • 16. The interwar period: Hans Tietze, Paul Frankl, Dagobert Frey; art criticism / Handbooks of art history and world art history (Handbuch, Kunsttopographie, Festschrift, Ikonographie).
  • VI. An attempt to change perspective: the interpretation of works of art
  • 17. Aby M. Warburg: expression, culture and the beginnings of the iconological method; iconography and iconology (Erwin Panofsky, Edgar Wind and Rudolf Wittkower).
  • 18. Structuralism and the Younger Vienna School of Art History: Hans Sedlmayr, Guido Kaschnitz-Weinberg.
Literature
    required literature
  • KROUPA, Jiří. Školy dějin umění : metodologie dějin umění. 2., přeprac. vyd. Brno: Masarykova univerzita, 2007, 253 s. ISBN 9788021042476. info
  • WITTLICH, Petr. Literatura k dějinám umění :vývojový přehled. 1. vyd. Praha: Karolinum, 1992, 118 s. ISBN 80-7066-558-0. info
    recommended literature
  • LOCHER, Hubert. Kunstgeschichte als historische Theorie der Kunst, 1750-1950. 2. korr. und um ein Nachw. e. München: Wilhelm Fink, 2010, 533 s. ISBN 9783770550838. info
  • KULTERMANN, Udo. Geschichte der Kunstgeschichte : der Weg einer Wissenschaft. München: Prestel-Verlag, 1990, 272 stran. ISBN 3791310569. info
    not specified
  • LOCHER, Hubert. Quellen zur Theorie und Geschichte der Kunstgeschichte. Eine kommentierte Anthologie I-IV. Darmstadt: WBG (Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft), 2007 - 2010
Teaching methods
Lectures; homework with an e-learning; reading.
Assessment methods
Written test
Language of instruction
Czech
The course is also listed under the following terms Spring 2020, Spring 2021, Spring 2022, Spring 2023, Spring 2024.
  • Enrolment Statistics (Spring 2025, recent)
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