Ernst Kitzinger
Encyclopedia
Ernst Kitzinger was a German
-American
historian of late antique
, early medieval
, and Byzantine art
.
; his father, Wilhelm Nathan Kitzinger, was a prominent lawyer, and his cousin, Richard Krautheimer
, would likewise become a major historian of late antique and Byzantine architecture
. He entered the University of Munich
in 1931, where he studied the history of art under Wilhelm Pinder. The beginning of the Nazi
regime in 1933 raised the immediate possibility that Jewish students might be banned from receiving degrees. Kitzinger accordingly completed his dissertation, a brief but influential study of Roman painting in the 7th and 8th centuries, with exceptional speed, and defended it in the fall of 1934. Later that same year he left Germany.
Kitzinger travelled first to Rome
, before settling in England
, where he found employment at the British Museum
. He quickly developed an interest in Anglo-Saxon art
, publishing several important studies of the subject, and assessing the Sutton Hoo
treasure when it was unearthed in 1939. In 1937 he travelled to Egypt
and Istanbul
, thus further widening his perspective on late antique and early medieval art as an "international" phenomenon. It was this perspective that he brought to his first book, Early Medieval Art at the British Museum (1940). More than a guidebook, this was in fact an attempt to describe the transformation of the classical style into the medieval, a subject which Kitzinger would revisit on many occasions throughout his career.
In a paradoxical turn of events, Kitzinger, forced to leave Germany because he was Jewish, was in 1940 forced to leave England because he was German. He was imprisoned in Australia
for nine months, where he passed the time by learning Russian
from a fellow prisoner.
In 1941 the Warburg Institute
was able to secure Kitzinger's release, and he travelled to Washington D.C., where he became a fellow at Dumbarton Oaks
. There Kitzinger was assigned to study the Byzantine monuments of the Balkans, producing as a result an important article on the monuments of Stobi
. Several years later, and also as the result of an assignment, Kitzinger began work on a complete survey of the mosaics of Norman Sicily
. This project would occupy him for the rest of his life, resulting in the eventual publication of his six-volume corpus, I mosaici del periodo normanno in Sicilia (1992).
Kitzinger quickly advanced through the ranks at Dumbarton Oaks, becoming an Assistant Professor in 1946, Associate Professor in 1951, Director of Studies in 1955, and Professor of Byzantine Art and Archaeology in 1956. As Director of Studies he transformed Dumbarton Oaks into an academic institution of international renown, ensuring the annual publication of the institute's journal of Byzantine studies
(Dumbarton Oaks Papers), creating a photographic archive, and serving as a mentor to the younger scholars.
Dumbarton Oaks had always been associated with Harvard University
, and Kitzinger had occasionally taught courses at its Cambridge campus. In 1967 he moved to Harvard permanently, accepting a position as the Arthur Kingsley Porter University Professor, which he held until his retirement in 1979. At Harvard Kitzinger supervised eighteen dissertations, and many of his students (including Christine Kondoleon, Irving Lavin, Henry Maguire, Lawrence Nees, and William Tronzo) became significant art historians in their own right.
The major theoretical contributions of Kitzinger's later career are embodied in his book Byzantine art in the making (1977), originally delivered as a series of lectures at the University of Cambridge
, and in a volume of his collected essays, The art of Byzantium and the medieval West (1976). In both volumes Kitzinger maintained his life-long preoccupation with the analysis of style change in late antique and early medieval art, and his conviction that stylistic analysis could speak with an authority equal to that of iconography
or textual history. To this end he developed a theory of "modes," according to which certain styles were appropriate to the depiction of certain subjects. In Byzantine art in the making, furthermore, he essayed a bold attempt to trace the stylistic "dialectic
" of the period in question:
Since stylistic analysis fell out of fashion in the 1980s and 1990s, the legacy of Kitzinger's theories remains uncertain. Byzantine art in the making has been described as the last gasp of Viennese-style
formalist
art history
on the model of Alois Riegl
and Josef Strzygowski
. However, it has also been argued that "when the pendulum of fashion swings back again, [Kitzinger's] works will undoubtedly be central to a reconsideration of style.".
Kitzinger died in Poughkeepsie, New York
at age 90.
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
-American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
historian of late antique
Late Antiquity
Late Antiquity is a periodization used by historians to describe the time of transition from Classical Antiquity to the Middle Ages, in both mainland Europe and the Mediterranean world. Precise boundaries for the period are a matter of debate, but noted historian of the period Peter Brown proposed...
, early medieval
Medieval art
The medieval art of the Western world covers a vast scope of time and place, over 1000 years of art history in Europe, and at times the Middle East and North Africa...
, and Byzantine art
Byzantine art
Byzantine art is the term commonly used to describe the artistic products of the Byzantine Empire from about the 5th century until the Fall of Constantinople in 1453....
.
Biography
Kitzinger was born into a highly educated Jewish family in MunichMunich
Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...
; his father, Wilhelm Nathan Kitzinger, was a prominent lawyer, and his cousin, Richard Krautheimer
Richard Krautheimer
Richard Krautheimer was a 20th century art historian, architectural historian, Baroque scholar, and Byzantinist....
, would likewise become a major historian of late antique and Byzantine architecture
Byzantine architecture
Byzantine architecture is the architecture of the Byzantine Empire. The empire gradually emerged as a distinct artistic and cultural entity from what is today referred to as the Roman Empire after AD 330, when the Roman Emperor Constantine moved the capital of the Roman Empire east from Rome to...
. He entered the University of Munich
Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich
The Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich , commonly known as the University of Munich or LMU, is a university in Munich, Germany...
in 1931, where he studied the history of art under Wilhelm Pinder. The beginning of the Nazi
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
regime in 1933 raised the immediate possibility that Jewish students might be banned from receiving degrees. Kitzinger accordingly completed his dissertation, a brief but influential study of Roman painting in the 7th and 8th centuries, with exceptional speed, and defended it in the fall of 1934. Later that same year he left Germany.
Kitzinger travelled first to Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
, before settling in England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
, where he found employment at the British Museum
British Museum
The British Museum is a museum of human history and culture in London. Its collections, which number more than seven million objects, are amongst the largest and most comprehensive in the world and originate from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its...
. He quickly developed an interest in Anglo-Saxon art
Anglo-Saxon art
Anglo-Saxon art covers art produced within the Anglo-Saxon period of English history, beginning with the Migration period style that the Anglo-Saxons brought with them from the continent in the 5th century, and ending in 1066 with the Norman Conquest of a large Anglo-Saxon nation-state whose...
, publishing several important studies of the subject, and assessing the Sutton Hoo
Sutton Hoo
Sutton Hoo, near to Woodbridge, in the English county of Suffolk, is the site of two 6th and early 7th century cemeteries. One contained an undisturbed ship burial including a wealth of Anglo-Saxon artefacts of outstanding art-historical and archaeological significance, now held in the British...
treasure when it was unearthed in 1939. In 1937 he travelled to Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
and Istanbul
Istanbul
Istanbul , historically known as Byzantium and Constantinople , is the largest city of Turkey. Istanbul metropolitan province had 13.26 million people living in it as of December, 2010, which is 18% of Turkey's population and the 3rd largest metropolitan area in Europe after London and...
, thus further widening his perspective on late antique and early medieval art as an "international" phenomenon. It was this perspective that he brought to his first book, Early Medieval Art at the British Museum (1940). More than a guidebook, this was in fact an attempt to describe the transformation of the classical style into the medieval, a subject which Kitzinger would revisit on many occasions throughout his career.
In a paradoxical turn of events, Kitzinger, forced to leave Germany because he was Jewish, was in 1940 forced to leave England because he was German. He was imprisoned in Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
for nine months, where he passed the time by learning Russian
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
from a fellow prisoner.
In 1941 the Warburg Institute
Warburg Institute
The Warburg Institute is a research institution associated with the University of London in central London, England. A member of the School of Advanced Study, its focus is the study of the influence of classical antiquity on all aspects of European civilisation.-History:The Institute was founded by...
was able to secure Kitzinger's release, and he travelled to Washington D.C., where he became a fellow at Dumbarton Oaks
Dumbarton Oaks
Dumbarton Oaks is the conventional name for the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, situated on a historic property in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. The institution is administered by the Trustees for Harvard University. Its founders, Robert Woods Bliss and his wife...
. There Kitzinger was assigned to study the Byzantine monuments of the Balkans, producing as a result an important article on the monuments of Stobi
Stobi
Stobi was an ancient town of Paeonia, later conquered by Macedon, and later turned into the capital of the Roman province of Macedonia Salutaris . It is located on the main road that leads from the Danube to the Aegean Sea and is considered by many to be the most famous archaeological site in the...
. Several years later, and also as the result of an assignment, Kitzinger began work on a complete survey of the mosaics of Norman Sicily
Kingdom of Sicily
The Kingdom of Sicily was a state that existed in the south of Italy from its founding by Roger II in 1130 until 1816. It was a successor state of the County of Sicily, which had been founded in 1071 during the Norman conquest of southern Italy...
. This project would occupy him for the rest of his life, resulting in the eventual publication of his six-volume corpus, I mosaici del periodo normanno in Sicilia (1992).
Kitzinger quickly advanced through the ranks at Dumbarton Oaks, becoming an Assistant Professor in 1946, Associate Professor in 1951, Director of Studies in 1955, and Professor of Byzantine Art and Archaeology in 1956. As Director of Studies he transformed Dumbarton Oaks into an academic institution of international renown, ensuring the annual publication of the institute's journal of Byzantine studies
Byzantine studies
Byzantine studies is an interdisciplinary branch of the humanities that addresses the history, culture, costumes, religion, art, such as literature and music, science, economy, and politics of the Byzantine Empire. The discipline's founder in Germany is considered to be the philologist Hieronymus...
(Dumbarton Oaks Papers), creating a photographic archive, and serving as a mentor to the younger scholars.
Dumbarton Oaks had always been associated with Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
, and Kitzinger had occasionally taught courses at its Cambridge campus. In 1967 he moved to Harvard permanently, accepting a position as the Arthur Kingsley Porter University Professor, which he held until his retirement in 1979. At Harvard Kitzinger supervised eighteen dissertations, and many of his students (including Christine Kondoleon, Irving Lavin, Henry Maguire, Lawrence Nees, and William Tronzo) became significant art historians in their own right.
The major theoretical contributions of Kitzinger's later career are embodied in his book Byzantine art in the making (1977), originally delivered as a series of lectures at the University of Cambridge
University of Cambridge
The University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...
, and in a volume of his collected essays, The art of Byzantium and the medieval West (1976). In both volumes Kitzinger maintained his life-long preoccupation with the analysis of style change in late antique and early medieval art, and his conviction that stylistic analysis could speak with an authority equal to that of iconography
Iconography
Iconography is the branch of art history which studies the identification, description, and the interpretation of the content of images. The word iconography literally means "image writing", and comes from the Greek "image" and "to write". A secondary meaning is the painting of icons in the...
or textual history. To this end he developed a theory of "modes," according to which certain styles were appropriate to the depiction of certain subjects. In Byzantine art in the making, furthermore, he essayed a bold attempt to trace the stylistic "dialectic
Dialectic
Dialectic is a method of argument for resolving disagreement that has been central to Indic and European philosophy since antiquity. The word dialectic originated in Ancient Greece, and was made popular by Plato in the Socratic dialogues...
" of the period in question:
At certain times and in certain places bold stabs were made in the direction of new, unclassical forms, only to be followed by reactions, retrospective movements and revivals. In some contexts such developments - in either direction - took place slowly, hestitantly, and by steps so small as to be almost imperceptible. In addition there were extraordinary attempts at synthesis, at reconciling conflicting aesthetic ideals. Out of this complex dialectic, medieval form emerged.
Since stylistic analysis fell out of fashion in the 1980s and 1990s, the legacy of Kitzinger's theories remains uncertain. Byzantine art in the making has been described as the last gasp of Viennese-style
Vienna School of Art History
The Vienna School of Art History is a collective term used to describe the development of fundamental art-historical methods at the University of Vienna...
formalist
Formalism
The term formalism describes an emphasis on form over content or meaning in the arts, literature, or philosophy. A practitioner of formalism is called a formalist. A formalist, with respect to some discipline, holds that there is no transcendent meaning to that discipline other than the literal...
art history
Art history
Art history has historically been understood as the academic study of objects of art in their historical development and stylistic contexts, i.e. genre, design, format, and style...
on the model of Alois Riegl
Alois Riegl
Alois Riegl was an Austrian art historian, and is considered a member of the Vienna School of Art History...
and Josef Strzygowski
Josef Strzygowski
Josef Strzygowski was a German art historian known for his theory on the influence of Early Christian Armenian architecture on the early Medieval architecture of Europe, outlined in his book, Die Baukunst der Armenier und Europa...
. However, it has also been argued that "when the pendulum of fashion swings back again, [Kitzinger's] works will undoubtedly be central to a reconsideration of style.".
Kitzinger died in Poughkeepsie, New York
Poughkeepsie (city), New York
Poughkeepsie is a city in the state of New York, United States, which serves as the county seat of Dutchess County. Poughkeepsie is located in the Hudson River Valley midway between New York City and Albany...
at age 90.
External links
- Kitzinger at the Biographical Dictionary of Art Historians
- Ernst Kitzinger papers, 1931-1995. Research Library at the Getty Research Institute. Los Angeles, California. The papers document Ernst Kitzinger’s scholarly contribution to the history of late antique, early Christian, Byzantine, and early medieval art. The collection is composed of offprints of his published work, research materials, lecture materials, teaching files, and photographs and slides.