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This paper focuses on Caspar von Zumbusch, who was one of the leading sculptors of the second half of the 19th century in Vienna. At the initiative of the art historian Rudolf Eitelberger, the German sculptor was appointed to the Academy of Fine Arts (Akademie der bildenden Künste) in Vienna in 1873 and became the founder of the so-called Vienna school of monumental sculpture. By means of a statistical analysis of the matriculation books that serve as reliable documentation of the students enrolled in the Academy, the number and origin of Zumbusch's students can be determined for the first time. The results show that Zumbusch taught numerous students from all over the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which made the Vienna Academy the preeminent centre for sculptors in the Dual Monarchy. Once the students had graduated, Zumbusch recommended them for projects and thereby established a large network of sculptors across the Austro-Hungarian Empire towards the end of the 19th century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent publications on the historiography of modern Spanish architecture have once again made C. Flores' major work, Arquitectura Española Contemporánea (1961), the focus of their scholarly attention. Flores' text is portrayed as an important contribution to the Modern Movement in the context of the Franco regime. However, the significance of W. Gropius and the Bauhaus was not mentioned. This omission becomes all the more peculiar when considering Sigfried Giedion's Space, Time and Architecture (1941), with which Flores was well acquainted through the 1955 Spanish translation. This paper analyzes Flores' genealogy of modern architecture at the textual level. In addition, it addresses the visual level of his book, for the first time uncovering a narration that contradicts a straightforward illustration, yet reveals Flores' stance vis-à-vis modern architecture and the Bauhaus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the ways Mies van der Rohe has dealt with the phenomenon of mechanization of all areas of human life, that ever since the mid-twenties was becoming an increasingly controversial political issue. Building on a number of philosophical essays on the role of modern large-scale technology, especially those by Friedrich Dessauer, Mies advanced a strategy that can be described as the aesthetic transcendence of industrially-produced technical items. By positioning his architecture in this manner, he warded off all accusations of purely economically-motivated rationalism. What Mies considered to be a "spiritual" approach to architecture has also defined the program of the Werkbund that he presided at that time and has laid the foundation for his postwar work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The painter and etcher Theodoor van Thulden (1606-1669) was documented as a master in Antwerp from 1626, though not long thereafter, at the beginning of the 1630s, he would move to France. The aim of this article is to reconstruct why he chose to return to Antwerp in 1634 by analyzing three possible factors in his relocation: family obligations, a position as churchwarden at the church of St. Jacob, and the Joyous Entry of the Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand of Spain into Antwerp on 17 April 1635. The investigation includes a reconsideration of the sources that have generally been used to reconstruct his biography, as well as a study of previously unknown archival material. From all these sources it can be deduced that van Thulden was probably in direct contact with Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) at the beginning of his career, and that it was Rubens who encouraged him to return to Antwerp. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The institutionalisation of Slovenian art history began in 1913, when France Stele (1886-1972), a student of Max Dvorak (1874-1921), was appointed the conservator of the province of Carniola. It became fully established in 1919, when, after the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, the University of Ljubljana was founded. The paper analyses the activities of three art historians, in addition to France Stele also Izidor Cankar (1886-1958) and Vojeslav Mole (1886-1973), who shaped Slovenian art history between the two world wars. After the end of World War II, all aspects of life were completely subordinated to the Soviet system of the one-party communist state. Ideological suitability was the only standard of acceptability, also at the university. In the immediate post-war period, the older generation of art historians, who were educated in the Western European tradition, mostly in Vienna, were placed in a completely new ideological-political context, which has highly influenced the development and methodology of the discipline until the present day. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the middle of the 14th century, the chapel Maria am Gestade at the edge of the medieval city of Vienna was extended by a three-bay chancel with a double narthex and portal. Construction of the tower on a heptogonal groundplan was started at the same time. Besides stylistic and organizational connections with St. Stephan's Cathedral, the innovation of the choir can be seen in the reduction of the mural volume in favor of an enormous increase of the window size. The present paper combines the analysis of written sources with stylistic comparisons including the examination of the stonemarks. A final conclusion is made on the founder's intentions as well as on medieval use of the chancel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay represents a pioneering attempt to conceive of Mies van der Rohe's work as a transformation of 'archetypes'. We will begin by addressing Mies' belief in architectural objectivity, which rests on three theoretic positions: first, the antispeculative reference to scientific practice of Alois Riehl's philosophy; secondly, the 'objective philosophy' of the biologist Raoul H. Francé, which requires that any effective action follows the "laws of the renewal of the organic world"; and finally, the demand for architectural renewal through the transformation of archetypal forms made by Hendrik Petrus Berlage following Gottfried Semper. It is notably Mies' reference to Berlage's theorem that will be explored in the second part of this essay that will shed new light onto his design practice. At the core of the analysis an array of specific designs by Frank Lloyd Wright provides the framework for a fundamental understanding of Mies's early country house designs as resting on the process of modernization of archetypes; these were embodied in Japanese interiors, reproductions of which were widely disseminated in Germany in the 1920s, as well as in the then re-discovered work of Schinkel's disciple Ludwig Persius. The aim of this study of renewal through transformation is not only to reveal Mies' design process as a matter of complex visual 'calculus', but also to make a general contribution to the semantics of modernity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]