Josef Strzygowski

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Josef Strzygowski (March 7, 1862 January 2, 1941) was a

Polish-Austrian art historian known for his theories promoting
influences from the art of the Near East on European art, for
example that of Early Christian Armenian architecture on the early
Medieval architecture of Europe, outlined in his book, Die
Baukunst der Armenier und Europa (an aspect of his thinking that
has survived better than many others).[1] He is considered a
member of the Vienna School of Art History.

Contents
1 Life
2 Legacy
Strzygowski in Vienna

3 Notes
4 Bibliography
5 External links

Life
Strzygowski was born in Biala, Austrian Silesia (today part of Poland). His father was a cloth manufacturer,
and Strzygowski initially intended to pursue the same trade, beginning an apprenticeship in a weaving plant
in 1880. In 1882, however, he abandoned this career and enrolled at the University of Vienna. He soon
transferred to the University of Munich, where he studied art history and completed a dissertation on the
iconography of the Baptism of Christ, published in 1885 as Ikonographie der Taufe Christi.
For the next three years Strzygowski lived in Rome, where he completed a study of Cimabue und Rom
(1887) (Cimabue and Rome), which emphasized the Byzantine sources of the Italian painter's work. Late in
life he stated that this work led to the question which would define all of his subsequent scholarship: "What
is Rome, what, in reality, is Italian and European art?"[2]
Following his Roman sojourn, Strzygowski travelled to Thessaloniki, Mount Athos, Saint Petersburg, and
Moscow, thus developing a greater acquaintance with Byzantine and Russian art. In 1892 he was appointed
to the faculty of the University of Graz, but in 1894 and 1895, he lived in Cairo, where he studied the early
Byzantine and Islamic art of Egypt, and compiled a catalog of the Coptic art in the Cairo Museum. Upon his
return he entered a period of intense scholarly activity, publishing numerous articles on Byzantine and
Islamic art, fields in which he considered himself to be the pioneer.

It was in the midst of this activity that Strzygowski published his first frankly polemical work, Orient oder
Rom: Beitrge zur Geschichte der sptantiken und frchristlichen Kunst (1901) (The Orient or Rome:
contributions to the history of late antique and early Christian art). Drawing on such diverse materials as
Palmyrene art and sculpture, Anatolian sarcophagi, late antique ivories from Egypt, and Coptic textiles,
Strzygowski argued, in overtly racial and often racist terms, that style change in late antiquity was the
product of an overwhelming "Oriental" or "Semitic" influence. In one modern characterization of both the
argument and its rhetorical tone, "Strzygowski [presented] Hellas as a beautiful maiden who sold herself to
an 'Old Semite' to be kept as the jewel of his harem."[3]
Orient oder Rom was explicitly framed as an attack on Die Wiener Genesis (1895), by the Viennese art
historian Franz Wickhoff, which had posited a Roman origin for the late antique style, a thesis that was
pursued further by Alois Riegl in his Sptrmische Kunstindustrie, which also appeared in 1901. The
ensuing controversy continued for decades and, if it resulted in no clear resolution, significantly raised the
prominence of late antique art as an academic field of study.
In 1909, however, upon Wickhoff's death, Strzygowski was appointed as his successor at the University of
Vienna, partly as a result of the breadth of his research, and partly as a result of intricate academic politics
and (possibly) the advocacy of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. His appointment resulted in an enduring schism
among Viennese art historians, pitting Strzygowski against Max Dvorak and Julius von Schlosser, which
was exacerbated when Strzygowski established his own research institute within the university (the Wiener
Institut or Erstes kunsthistorisches Institut).
In Vienna Strzygowski continued to publish on a variety of topics, maintaining a certain focus on the arts of
Byzantium and Islam, but also treating Armenian, Norse, and Slavic subjects, among others. He also gave
frequent and well-attended public lectures to audiences "consisting partly, but not solely, of radical panGerman students and sycophants."[4] Strzygowski's own radical pan-Germanism had already become clear
in his popular Die bildende Kunst der Gegenwart (1907) (The visual art of the future), in which he praised
the painting of Arnold Bcklin and called for a new German artist-hero to reject the heritage of classical
antiquity and the Renaissance.
It would not be possible to summarize all of the theses advanced by Strzygowski in the course of his career.
Brief mention may be made of his controversy with Ernst Herzfeld over the origins of the Mshatta facade, in
which Herzfeld's position was eventually proven to be correct; and his two-volume Die Baukunst der
Armenier und Europa (1918) (The architecture of the Armenians and Europe), in which he claimed to have
traced the origins of Gothic architecture to Armenia.
Strzygowski retired from the University of Vienna in 1933, but in 1934 founded the Gesellschaft fr
vergleichende Kunstforschung (Society for comparative art history) to serve as a platform for his theories.
He died in 1941 in Vienna.

Legacy
In general Strzygowski's work was characterized by a reliance on formal comparisons at the expense of
historical context, and by a pervasive exaltation of the peoples of the "North" and "East", with an attendant
disdain for "Mediterranean" culture. Some historians claim that the latter led him to embrace the racist
ideology of the Nazis and to support Adolf Hitler.[5]
If Strzygowski's erratic methodology have largely discredited his own scholarship, his breadth of
geographical interest helped to establish Islamic art, (something which, incidentally, Ernst Gombrich denied
in his conversations with Didier Eribon), and Jewish art as legitimate fields of study. Certain of his students

(most notably Otto Demus, Fritz Novotny, and Ernst Diez) were successfully able to pursue these interests
without subscribing to their teacher's ideology.[6]

Notes
1. Dictionary of Art Historians, Josef Strzygowski (http://www.dictionaryofarthistorians.org/strzygowski.htm), accessed
17-05-2009.
2. S. Marchand, "The rhetoric of artifacts and the decline of classical humanism: the case of Josef Strzygowski,"
History and Theory 33 (1994), 117.
3. J. Elsner, "The birth of late antiquty: Riegl and Strzygowski in 1901," Art History 25 (2002), 372.
4. S. Marchand, "The rhetoric of artifacts and the decline of classical humanism: the case of Josef Strzygowski,"
History and Theory 33 (1994), 121.
5. M. Olin, "Alois Riegl: the late Roman Empire in the late Habsburg Empire," Austrian studies 5 (1994), 116.
6. Dictionary of Art Historians, Josef Strzygowski (http://www.dictionaryofarthistorians.org/strzygowski.htm), accessed
17-05-2009.

Bibliography
J. Elsner, "The birth of late antiquty: Riegl and Strzygowski in 1901," Art History 25 (2002), 358-79.
C. Maranci, Medieval Armenian Architecture: Constructions of Race and Nation (Louvain, 2001).
S. Marchand, "The rhetoric of artifacts and the decline of classical humanism: the case of Josef
Strzygowski," History and Theory 33 (1994), 106-30.

External links
Strzygowski at the Biographical Dictionary of Art Historians (http://dictionaryofarthistorians.org/strzy
gowski.htm)
Website of the Gesellschaft fr vergleichende Kunstforschung (http://kunstgeschichte.univie.ac.at/inde
x.php?id=ifk-verein2) (in German)
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Josef_Strzygowski&oldid=704173031"
Categories: 1862 births 1941 deaths People from Biaa People from Austrian Silesia
19th-century Austrian people 20th-century Austrian people Austrian art historians
Austrian architectural historians Historians of Islamic art Austrian people of Polish descent
Armenian studies scholars
This page was last modified on 10 February 2016, at 00:17.
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