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Renaissance Patterns

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Heinrich Wölfflin’s Classic Patterns of the Renaissance

Christine Tauber

Published online:

04 Mar 2024

Abstract

Abstract

This essay examines Heinrich Wölfflin’s patterns of judgement in his pioneering art-historical study Classic Art, first published in 1899. By using the anti-historicist concept of the “classic”, he systematically withdraws the art of the High Renaissance from historical change in order to erect it as a protective shield against the transience of unclassic modernism and contemporary life. This proto-structuralist act of creating order by means of pattern comparisons in the timeless realm of beauty conceives the art historian as both an intellectual aristocrat with artistic ambitions and a conservator of the eternities of classic art.

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Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte Issues

Volume 87 (2024)
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Volume 85 (2022)
Volume 84 (2021)
Volume 83 (2020)
Volume 82 (2019)
Volume 81 (2018)
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Volume 79 (2016)

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