Table of Contents |
If you look at the term “art history,” it may simply seem to mean the history of art; however, that really only explains part of it. There’s more to art history than just names and dates.
Art history can be defined as the academic study of the history and development of the visual arts. This study includes different methods, which are the set of rules or philosophy that informs a person’s approach to understanding art history.
The biggest part of art history involves looking at the development of the visual arts, and how what the artwork depicts is really a reflection of the cultural and social environment at the time of its production.
In other words, you can think of art history as an interesting way to learn about culture and historical context. Art history tends to bleed into other areas of academia, such as anthropology, archaeology, and philosophy. You’ll notice a lot of crossover between subjects.
Just as art history extends into many different subject areas, very few artists were simply artists; their interests extended into many different areas as well.
To understand the background of art history, you should know four very important figures:
Gaius Plinius Secundus was given the moniker Pliny the Elder to help differentiate him from Pliny the Younger, who was his nephew and adopted son.
23 AD - 79 AD
Rome, Italy
Pliny the Elder was born in 23 AD and died in 79 AD. He was Roman, and a contemporary of Jesus Christ, to put him into a historical context. This doesn’t mean he knew Jesus; in fact, he probably never heard of him. Their lifespans simply crossed each other.
Pliny the Elder wrote a book called Natural History that included a section devoted to art history. This was the first time that somebody actually documented important works of art.
The book became so influential that it was considered the reference for art history well into the Middle Ages, over 1,000 years after it was written.
The man known simply as Petrarch was born in 1304 and died in 1374. He was an Italian author and philologist, which is a person who studies literature.
1304-1374
Italy
To put him in historical context, he lived during the time of the “Black Death,” or bubonic plague, that killed about a third of Europe’s population.
Petrarch was known as the “Father of Humanism,” but his most important contribution to art history is arguably how his work led to the conceptual awareness of distinct artistic periods.
This idea is common practice now—people look for common threads in order to categorize things. Periods such as the Renaissance, the Baroque, Romanticism, etc., are categories of artwork that share commonalities.
The problem with his particular approach is that there is a slippery slope with any kind of generalizing. For Petrarch, it led him toward making broad assumptions that nothing happened during what he pejoratively referred to as the “Dark Ages,” when, in fact, lots of things happened during this time.
Petrarch was avoiding, or maybe just didn’t realize, the way you need to take into account local customs and style. He also wasn’t shy about his preference for the classics of ancient Rome and Greece.
Giorgio Vasari was an Italian architect and artist.
1511-1574
Italy
He was born in 1511 and died in 1574, and was a contemporary of Queen Elizabeth I, ruler of England, and Michelangelo, the artist. In fact, he actually knew Michelangelo.
His book, The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, was the first biographical model of art history. It was the first book that was written from the perspective of the artist, and it’s still very influential today. If you take any kind of art history class at the college level, you are likely to use it.
Giorgio Vasari was the first to use the term “Renaissance,” and he tended to have a bias toward Florentine artists. He also had a tendency to include a lot of anecdotal bits in his work, which were interesting, but strayed from the facts at times.
Johann Wincklemann was a German author born in 1717. He died in 1768, about eight years before the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
1717-1768
Germany
Winckelmann proposed the idea of the cultural and chronological impact on art production, and was actually the first to suggest that there was a regional or national style to art. His work even led to the formal adoption of art history and archaeology as true academic disciplines.
Additionally, Johann Winckelmann had the classical idea that the goal of a true artist is to produce beauty, and that this is achieved by adhering to certain principles and ideals, often at the expense of individual characteristics or realism.
Source: THIS TUTORIAL WAS AUTHORED BY IAN MCCONNELL FOR SOPHIA LEARNING. Please see our Terms of Use.
