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Matthew Hayes’ volume examines the influence of nineteenth-century scholarship on the activities of contemporary paintings restorers, and, vice-versa, investigates how the visual effects of conservation treatments impacted contemporary scholarship. This reciprocal relationship is explored in four case studies, two situated in Italy (Giottesque frescoes and paintings by Titian), on in the United Kingdom (National Gallery London) and one in Germany (the Berlin museums). Hayes focuses on the treatment of paintings from the Renaissance, a period that knew strong interest from nineteenth-century scholars. He weaves together historical archival material (personal notes, correspondence, restoration records, historical photographs, etc.) and period texts (a.o. by Jacob Burckhardt, G.B. Cavalcaselle, Joseph Crowe), into a rich and accessible account, interspersed with examples of historical restoration treatments of well-known paintings and with restorer biographies. The resulting volume provides an entertaining and very accessible entry into the topic, whether the reader comes from (art) history or has a background in conservation.

Es gibt Begriffe, die scheinen selbsterklärend zu sein. ‚Soldatenkaiser‘ ist solch ein Fall. Seit nunmehr über einhundert Jahren insbesondere in der deutschen althistorischen Forschung zum dritten nachchristlichen Jahrhundert präsent, hat er jahrzehntelang ein Schattendasein gefristet, wenn es um seine konzep­tionelle Fassung geht. Während sich dieser Umstand in der jüngeren Forschung markant geändert hat, sind trotz einiger weniger Studien die Begriffsge­schichte des gleichermaßen schillernden wie — allerdings nur vermeintlich — eindeutigen Wortes ‚Soldatenkaiser‘ und seine wissenschaftsgeschichtlichen Entwicklungslinien in vielerlei Hinsicht immer noch eine terra incognita, was noch weit mehr als für die deutschsprachige Altertumswissenschaft für die nicht-deutschsprachigen Forschungen zum dritten Jahrhundert gilt. There are terms that seem self-explanatory. ‘Soldatenkaiser’ is one such case. Present for over a hundred years now, especially in German research on the third century ce, it has for decades led a shadowy existence when it came to its conceptual definition. While this circumstance has changed markedly in recent research, the conceptual history of the equally iridescent and opaque word ‘Soldatenkaiser’ and its lines of development in the history of scholarship remain terra incognita in many respects. This is even more true for non-German-speaking research on the third century than it is for scholarship produced in German.

Este artigo tem o objetivo de produzir uma interpretação do legado intelectual de Jacob Burckhardt à luz de debates historiográficos recentes que tratam da relação entre a história e a crise da teologia protestante de língua alemã ao longo do Oitocentos. Para tanto, buscarei sustentar a hipótese de que a teoria burckhardtiana da história — com sua ênfase estética nos ideais de formação e de contemplação — pode, em grande medida, ser lida como a mais bem acabada de suas respostas à crise surgida a partir desse contato entre a crença religiosa e a ciência histórica no século XIX.

In this article, I portray both the "thinking historian" Heinz-Dieter Kittsteiner and his philosophical analysis of the unavailability of the historical process. In his book Out of Control (2004), Kittsteiner builds on Immanuel Kant's concept of the historical sign to demonstrate how history is out of joint due to the contingent character of the historical process. This understanding demands a new theory of historical time and of historiographical practice, which I reconstruct through a close reading of a chapter of Kittsteiner's book. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers a new interpretation of the historical relation between two foundational works in cultural history: Johan Huizinga's 'The Autumntide of the Middle Ages' (1919) and Jacob Burckhardt's 'The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy' (1860). The tension between these works has commonly been understood as a scholarly dispute over the proper historical periodization of European fifteenth-century cultural practices: whilst Burckhardt reconstructed his material in terms of its technical novelty, its ability to 'create' (schöpfen) a post-medieval world, Huizinga emphasized how fifteenth-century culture continued to 're-create' (her-scheppen) culture according to medieval symbolic codes. The present article suggests understanding this tension not as a product of a trans-historical scholarly dispute over the character of a given period of time, but as a consequence of Huizinga's experience of loss and nostalgia, his 'heimwee' for past times. Between 1903 and 1905, Huizinga witnessed a large-scale destruction of early-seventeenth-century architecture in Amsterdam so as to make way for 'the spirit of entrepreneurship,' and it was first in this context that Huizinga grew interested in the importance of historical recreations to European culture. This article shows how Huizinga's experience of urban modernization and 'the inhabited ruin' mediated his critique of Burckhardt's book on Renaissance Italy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Muchos de los comentaristas de Gómez Dávila han notado que el carácter de su obra es intertextual, es decir, que no es un sistema cerrado: siempre está conectado implícitamente con otros libros y pensadores. El mismo Gómez Dávila nos indica en sus Escolios que Montaigne y Burckhardt tienen un rol central en esta intertextualidad. El siguiente artículo se propone interpretar la conexión entre los dos pensadores mencionados y la obra del colombiano. En el caso de Burckhardt, se mostrará cómo su pesimismo antropológico basado en una idea del pecado original, su escepticismo sobre la posibilidad humana de construir utopías, su negación de la idea de progreso y su concepción del tamaño y el papel del Estado aparecen y se desarrollan en el pensamiento del colombiano. En el caso de Montaigne, se mostrará su cercanía con Gómez Dávila a partir de sus similitudes biográficas, su alejamiento del espíritu académico de sus propios tiempos, su concepción de la filosofía, su escepticismo como arma para defender la fe y su fuerte conservatismo. Finalmente, se concluirá que esta intertextualidad que el autor mismo señala en su confesión sobre Montaigne y Burckhardt nos ayuda a darle orden y sentido a sus posiciones políticas en los Escolios. En efecto, se intentará mostrar que Gómez Dávila articula las influencias de sus maestros para concluir en una visión de mundo reaccionaria.

This article was organized in three parts. In the first one, a concise introduction to the History of Greek Culture and its historical environment is presented. The focus of the second part lies on Burckhardt’s ideas on the emergence of the polis in Ancient Greece, and how the main thoughts of the Swiss historian tend to materialize in the Ancient past some theoretical conceptions of the nineteenth century. The Athens of Burckhardt is analyzed in the final part of this paper; the core of the author’s approach, and the way he built the idea of the “state as evil” to the democratic Athens of the fifth and the sixth centuries BC are explained. At last, the very meaning of Burckhardt’s Athens – a city-state degenerated by the government of its demoralized mob rule –, is discussed.

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"The Portrait of Mr W. H." was published in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine in 1889 and a second "version," as it is often termed, was written at various points between then and 1893, but it did not appear until 1921 and then only in a limited edition. This second text, first tentatively titled The Incomparable and ingenious history of Mr W. H. and here called the Rosenbach manuscript, is twice the length of the earlier piece, and in its tone, tenor, and range of reference very different. This article argues why it is important to distinguish carefully between Blackwood's "Mr W. H" and the Rosenbach manuscript. There is much to learn about Wilde's compositional practices and developing interest in doing so. [120 words] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the nature of Burckhardt's apolitia, and raises the question as to the real meaning of his detachment from political things. The first part presents some major interpretations of Burckhardt alleged "Greek" unpolitical attitude (Ernst Cassirer, Karl Löwith, Albert Salomon, Benedetto Croce), and shows how these authors understood Burckhardt's contemplative stance almost as a philosophical one. The second part offers a brief historical reconstruction of Burckhardt process of detachment, mostly drawing on his correspondence. The third part analyses the meaning of Burckhardt's transcendence of the present in the past, namely, the way in which the historian wins a critical perspective on the present by concentrating on history. This process of detachment from the present is interpreted in its "political" aspects; as shown in the fourth part, Burckhardt's apolitia amounts to a critical movement aimed at the recovery of the spiritual connection with the past. In this way, the paper maintains that his apolitia is, in truth, in service of a higher ideal of humanity, namely, a specific idea of civilization which must be understood in contradistinction to barbarism. The essence of barbarism is the absence of historic consciousness; it is only the awareness of a fundamental continuity in the flowing of human things that allows the flourishing of man's spiritual life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Jacob Burckhardt (1818-1897), author of the historical-cultural synthesis found in the book of 1860, The Culture of the Renaissance in Italy, elaborates, in the 1880s and 1890s, a study on Italian Renaissance painting, whose result is a set of texts, published posthumously. Part of this project, the volume on portrait in the painting presents a renewed look of the author about Venetian art compared to the vision of Venice presented in the book of 1860. This article proposes an analysis of the place occupied by portrait in Venetian painting and its role in Burckhardt's work on the Italian Renaissance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Escritos is the property of Escritos and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Classica: Revista Brasileira de Estudos Clássicos is the property of Sociedade Brasileira de Estudos Classicos and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The political element in art history has often played a crucial role and has been individuated as such for artists or their clients. But the political elements that shaped art historical theories or pattern of interpretations are not always clearly addressed as object of analysis. With this book Evonne Levy offers an explanation of the role politics and historical circumstances had on the shaping of an art-historical discourse between 1845 and 1945, focusing her attention on five major Germanophone scholars that had a crucial role in the rediscovery and study of the architectural Baroque. The concept was, as Levy argues in this book, a perfect example to detect the political implications of formalism, which in its reception is often considered apolitical. Aiming to situate formalism in its historical context, Levy focuses primarily on characterising formalist researches about Baroque through the political and philosophical elements that influenced Jacob Burckhardt, Heinrich Wölfflin, Cornelius Gurlitt, Albert Erich Brinckmann and Hans Sedlmayr between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Levy demonstrates how Baroque, from a ‘bad’ style and a ‘bad’ element in German art hds gradually become a ‘good’ element of art-historical discourse, situating it at the crossroad between art history and politics.

In his seminal 1962 essay,The Shape of Time, the American art historian George Kubler described the production of art as a series of attempts to ‘solve’ a certain artistic ‘problem’. The origin of these ‘problems’ is located in epochal artworks that are called ‘prime objects’ by Kubler. This essay situates this explanation for artistic innovation in the tradition of art historiography, most notably Jacob Burckhardt whose writings bear striking similarities to Kubler’s concepts and might have even inspired the neologism ‘prime object’. However, I argue that Kubler’s notion of the problem-posing ‘prime object’ virtually inverts the meaning of the term as employed by his predecessor and turns it – contrary to his own claim to write a ‘history of things’ – into a concept that has in some respects more affinities with a neo-Romantic Platonism. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Following David D. Roberts's insight, this essay attempts to further address this question: How does Hayden White charge his former idol Benedetto Croce as representing the decadent stage of 19th century European historical thought in White's major work, Metahistory. The author holds that, to rebel against Croce, White builds an alliance with the trio of Vico, Hegel, and Marx in Metahistory, defending their distinctive branches of speculative philosophy of history- which is part of the original meanings of the obscure term "meta-history" - against Croce's criticism. Before this new alliance taking place, White once attempted a similar intellectual coup by praising the historian Jacob Burckhardt, whom Croce had also criticized. However, after finding new allies in the above- mentioned trio, it became unnecessary for White to promote Burckhardt any longer. Therefore, White's new verdict on Burckhardt in Metahistory also turns unfavorable, and to a large extent replicates Croce's criticism of Burckhardt. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper looks at the role of the ‘historical crisis’ in Jacob Burckhardt’s theory of history. By examining how Burckhardt praised the ‘crisis’ for the ways in which it could accelerate historical processes, the paper challenges interpretations of his work that focus exclusively on its synchronic elements. It also examines the relationship of his theories of the crisis to his views on warfare and on how large-scale wars could serve to speed up historical development. Ultimately, this paper seeks to challenge the easy categorization of Burckhardt as either a conservative or a liberal thinker by suggesting that his work channelled the rhetoric of both his radical and his reactionary intellectual contemporaries. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper investigates the reasons why Burckhardt turned from the political notion of Ranke's Prussian School of historicism to his Swiss perspective, and how Burckhardt broke through the late eighteenth century thinking about cultural history as study of the encompassing "background" of history by opening his own way of dealing with cultural history with more emphasis on humanistic reflections. In 1843, Jacob Burckhardt (1818-1897) published his historical monography Conrad von Hochstaden, Erzbischof von Kolln, 1238-1261, in which he examined the conflicts between the Cologne archbishop Konrad of Hochstaden and the ruling patrician burghers-the so-called "die Richerzeche"-of the city. By revealing the fact that archbishop Konrad's incontinent desire to manipulate German politics in the mid-thirteenth century was engendered, on the one hand, by the exacerbating power struggle between the Holy Roman emperor and the Pope and, on the other hand, by the long-term absence of Frederick II from Germany, Burckhardt argued that the lack of the actual sovereignty in Germany at that time gave the city of Cologne a wonderful opportunity to create its own cultural golden age with diversity and abundance. Burckhardt's notion of the autonomous development of urban culture against the political strife between emperors and Popes is strengthened by his highlighting of the impartial role Albertus Magnus (c. 1208-1280) played in mediating the power struggles between archbishop Konrad and burghers in the city of Cologne. Thus, he opened the way to establish the basic discourse pattern of his later cultural-historical writing to discuss the very significance of autonomy of culture in the politically troubled time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What is the basis for the enormous success of Historicism? In my paper I attempt to answer this question by deploying the concept of the cultural pattern. A 'cultural pattern' may be defined as the connection of concepts and practices which have gained a relative perpetuity through cultural habitualization. Cultural patterns include a combination of interpretative schemes according to which the world can be categorized, structured and interpreted with individual or social practices which either develop out of, or follow these schemes. Because they combine concepts and practices in a significant manner they gain a contour which enables the creation of communicative addressability, practical appropriation and discursive analysis and hence the creation of a long-term exemplary status. A cultural pattern according to this definition has a relative stability and an observable effect over a long period of time, but which is simultaneously liable to permanent actualization and adaption. Historicism has been considered to be a basic thought-pattern of modernity since Troeltsch, Meinecke and Koselleck; defining Historicism as a cultural pattern can help to explain its long-term effectiveness and its continuing productivity to the present day. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Die Kultur der Renaissance in Italien Jacob Burckhardt characterized early modern Europe as having two major features: the rise of individualism and the trend toward secularism. Late in life, Burckhardt witnessed the rising misunderstanding of his discussions about the Renaissance individualism and secularism in the shaping of German national identity and Nietzsche's philosophy of "Ubermensch." In order to clarify his own historical thinking, Burckhardt strove to specify his personal values in his last book, Erinnerungen aus Rubens. The present study aims to investigate how Burckhardt found the proper ways to make his thoughts clear by portraying Rubens as role model in presenting himself as a highly creative artist and a healthy-minded individual who led a happy family life as well as renowned public life during an age full of political and religious conflicts. The two main arguments of this paper are as follows: (1) How did Burckhardt rebut the notion of genius worship in his time with the ideal of l'uomo universale, to which Rubens served as an appropriate embodiment? (2) How did Burckhardt elaborate on the meaningful perception of "reality" in the secular world by distinguishing between the positivist notion of "reality" in nineteenth-century art and Rubens' humanistic approach to depicting the "reality" of the Thirty Years' War? And, how did he argue for the value of Rubens' perception of the "reality" in his time with regard to the pursuit of true happiness in the "secularized" modern world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]