Heinrich Wölfflin

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Wölfflin, Heinrich (Winterthur, 1864-1945, Zurich), son of the philologist Eduard Wölfflin (1831-1908), studied in Munich and was greatly influenced by J. Burckhardt, on whose retirement in 1893 he became professor at Basel. In 1901 he moved to Berlin, becoming a member of the Prussian Academy in 1911; in the following year he took up a professorship in Munich and in 1924 a similar appointment in Zurich.

Wölfflin's works on art include Prolegomena zu einer Psychologie der Architektur (1886), Renaissance und Barock (1888, reissued 1961), Die klassische Kunst (1899, reissued 1953), two works on Dürer (Die Kunst A. Dürers, 1905, reissued 1943, and Handzeichnungen von A. Dürer, 1914), and Das Erklären von Kunstwerken (1922, ed. J. Gantner 1969). In 1915 he published Kunstgeschichtliche Grundbegriffe. Das Problem der Stilentwicklung in der neueren Kunst (14th edn. 1970). This stimulating analysis of stylistic features which characterize different ages evinces a refined sensitiveness to the variations of expression distinguishing individual artists. Its five sections deal with the principles underlying contrasts: the linear and the picturesque, space and depth, closed form and open form, multiplicity and unity, and the relationship between effects achieved in painting and architecture by clarity and by its diffuseness. The applicability of these principles to literary structures was first recognized by exponents of Geistesgeschichte, with which Wölfflin expressed a kinship. Later works include Italien und das deutsche Formgefühl (1931) and Gedanken zur Kunstgeschichte (1941). Kleine Schriften, ed. J. Gantner, appeared posthumously in 1946, correspondence with J. Burckhardt in 1948, and with R. Huch, ed. H. M. Müller, in 1994.