Translation by Francesco MazzaferroDobslaw, Andreas
Die Wiener »Quellenschriften« und ihr Herausgeber Rudolf Eitelberger von Edelberg
Deutscher Kunstverlag
2009
Isbn 978-3-422-06743-1
[1] Text of the back cover:
"In 1871, Rudolf Eitelberger von Edelberg – the first Professor of Art History at the University of Vienna and the founder of the Austrian Museum for Art and Industry - initiated the publication of the “Quellenschriften für Kunstgeschichte und Kunsttechnik des Mittelalters und der Renaissance" (Source texts for art history and art technique of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance). This is the first and to date most comprehensive and systematic series edition on important art sources, supporting the still young discipline of art history of those days. Until 1882, 18 volumes, including texts by Leon Battista Alberti, Albrecht Dürer, Theophilus Presbyter and Leonardo da Vinci were published. This volume studies for the first time the Eitelberger’s Viennese "source documents" scientifically. The research basis is an extensive archival research. The analysis of the correspondence (attached in the Appendix) between editors and reviewers - including Albert Ilg, Hubert Janitschek, Heinrich Ludwig, Hans Semper, Moriz Thausing, Alfred Woltmann - provides insight into the complex genesis of the series. The detailed analysis at individual volumes and series in terms of contents, specialist goals, choice of editor, and technical questions, offers new perspectives on Eitelberger and its relationship with the Vienna School of Art History."
[2] The list of the eighteen volumes published between 1871 and 1882 as well as of fifteen volumes printed in the "new series" is presented at pages 171-174. It is just worth mentioning that we are speaking about the most famous series of art history sources ever published.
[3] With the kind permission of the author (Alexander Auf der Heyde), we present here the English translation of a review published in Sehepunkte, Rezensionsjournal für die Geschichtswissenschaften, Issue 10 (2010), No. 7-8 - (http://www.sehepunkte.de/2010/07/13703.html)
Andreas Dobslaw:
The Viennese 'Quellenschriften and Their Editor Rudolf Eitelberger von Edelberg
by Alexander Auf der Heyde
(translation by Francesco Mazzaferro)
The study of the sources, the analysis of texts and learning in an era of "iconic turns" and the new orientation of science of art in the direction of a historical science of the image are not topics that particularly attract the audience. Andreas Dobslaw shows a good dose of courage and pioneering spirit, and deals with a very important and lasting step for the formation of specialized historiography: the publication in Vienna since 1871 of the Quellenschriften und für Kunstgeschichte Kunsttechnik des Mittelalters und der Renaissance (Texts of history of art and artistic technique sources in the Middle Age and the Renaissance). The author provides his readers with a well-documented volume, which displays important information contributions, mainly from the point of view of publishing history and sociology of knowledge.
He devotes particular attention to the figure and the action of the still little-known founding father of the Vienna School of Art History, Rudolf Eitelberger von Edelberg. As the first Professor of Art History at the University of Vienna (1852) and as the founder of the Austrian Museum for Art and Industry (1863), Eitelberger is the ideational and institutional engine of artistic life of Vienna. Through intensive work on archives, Dobslaw can clarify the organizational role of Eitelberger and the actual extent of the Quellenschriften edition, being able to understand in some cases the complex history of the publications, but especially in other cases to reconstruct the many reasons why editorial projects were abandoned. In addition to the role of Eitelberger as a promoter and coordinator of the series, we discover that Albert Ilg, in his capacity as publisher and editor, is actually the " driving force" of the series and that, after the departure of Ilg as director of the imperial collections of Vienna (1876), this role will be played by Eduard Chmelarz (p. 64).
In addition to highlighting the importance of the series in terms of the creation of a network among art historians, another aspect deserving attention is that the Quellenschriften, from the very origin, were related to the collection policy and art teaching program of the Austrian Museum of Art and Industry. In fact, in several cases these are readings that focus on relevant technology and material issues of arts and crafts, as well as on labour economics. These are issues that affect both art historians as well the uninitiated professionals, such as artists and craftsmen.
Apart from the critical edition of the sources, the purpose of which is the reconstruction ("recensio") and correction ("emendatio") of texts often preserved in various manuscripts, Eitelberger aims - with the translation of texts - at reaching a wider audience and therefore, at making a contribution to the artistic life of the generation of the Ringstrasse [translator's note: the monumental ring around Vienna, along which all the public buildings of nineteenth century’s Vienna were built]. He notes during the editorial meeting on the Leonardo’s issue by Heinrich Ludwig (1881): "In fact our art, especially the German art, needs a deeper mastery of the scientific bases of painting. Both prevailing theories about style - a word that is not found in Leonardo – have been thrown into water: the traditional pedagogy of the Academy [translator's note: 'schulmännisch' comes from Schulmann, a term used as an expression of an educator giving attention to the political, legal and administrative grassroots of teaching] and the blunt concepts of the new German school of painting [translator's note: the Nazarenes]. Nowadays the modern art of painting seeks its salvation in the study and reception of the principles of the Renaissance, as well as in the study of nature." (quoted in Dobslaw , p . 33). Here shines since the forties of the nineteenth century a clearly defined project of a revival of contemporary art: the design is traced in "Kunstblatt" ( Art Newspaper ) , in the "Österreichische Blättern für Literatur und Kunst (Leaves of Austrians and Literature Art") and in the"Wiener Zeitung" [translator's note : the main newspaper of Vienna]. With pamphlets and lecture series on the history of art for artists and artisans, Eitelberger tries to take away the youth from those aesthetic theories who are adverse to him: the concept of art - technically immature – of the Cornelius Schule [translator's note: a school of art that had its foundations in the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich], and the radically anti-scientific approach to painter training of Waldmuller [translator's note: Ferdinand Georg Waldmuller (1793-1865), Austrian painter] .
The reading of the Treatise on Painting by Leonardo, in a special version dedicated to artists and based on concepts of popularization of science, must be therefore understood as a 'therapeutic' action: nascent artists and art historians should familiarize themselves with a material-technical vocabulary, which can put them directly in connection with the objects and the creative capacity of the old masters (p. 107-114). These concepts are in themselves not uncommon in the nineteenth century and Dobslaw correctly refers to other similar series of art literature. The crucial difference between the rest of Europe and what happened in Vienna thanks to the work of Eitelberger is the organizational capacity and coherence of educational policy, thanks to which in a few decades theoretic artistic approaches are implemented in a single institutional framework.
What is missing in these studies (except in the case of Leonardo) is an attempt to capture the treatment of sources in its historical development. In addition, authors such as Bottari, Rumohr, Eitelberger and Schlosser do not show to have all the same priorities in their introductions to the texts of the classics. So Julius von Schlosser, for example, does not identify himself at all with Eitelberger’s educational commitment on art, and therefore has a different interpretation of the art sources. As a student of Sickel and Wickhoff, he sees in the study of sources of art history an important contribution to the rapprochement of the nascent discipline to the philological-historical rules applied in studies on classical antiquity. As ‘study of art sources' he intends the "secondary, indirect written sources, especially the literary evidence understood in terms of global - historical discipline, which deal with the theoretical understanding of art, from their respective historical, aesthetic or technical points of view, while so-called impersonal evidence (inscriptions, registers and inventories) belongs to other disciplines, and may be registered only in annexes.". [1] The fact that Schlosser, whose writings on the history of the collections have been possible only by reading inventories and other "impersonal" sources, repudiates this kind of evidence in his study on art sources, is understandable in the sense he was inspired by Benedetto Croce’s approach and he had stepped back from his own positivist aesthetics position of his youth. The fact that inventories and catalogues (so sources without a "theoretical consciousness") may be significant forms of art literature is proved by Francis Haskell since the Sixties of the last century, in the studies he published on the history of taste. Medieval inscriptions also cited by Schlosser and "tituli" can contain significant critical judgments, if stripped of their rhetorical shell: Roberto Longhi emphasises this in his Proposte per una critica d'arte (Proposals For A Critique of Art) (1950), which, in turn, want to be a kind of response to Lionello Venturi and his aesthetics and history of the ideas arguments contained in the manual of Storia della critica d'arte (History of Art Criticism) (1948). [2]
These examples show how the simple choice of texts reflects the prevailing concept of artistic literature. Finally, we must keep in mind that Eitelberger, unlike Schlosser, in no way sees art as a purely historical phenomenon. He is, in fact, devoted to developing the "principles of art itself" (quoted in Dobslaw, p. 69), and his belief in the autonomy of art makes of him a representative of the tradition of thought created by Winckelmann. Eitelberg - as before him, Carl Friedrich von Rumohr - believes however that the aesthetic vocabulary is exhausted and looks for new ways to verbalise artistic creation through translation and editing of ancient texts.
Notes:
[1] Julius von Schlosser: Die Kunstliteratur. Ein Handbuch zur Quellenkunde der neueren Kunstgeschichte , Vienna 1924 first edition.
[2] Roberto Longhi Proposte per una critica d'arte, in: Paragone I (1950) and following .
https://letteraturaartistica.blogspot.com/2019/02/bottari.html https://letteraturaartistica.blogspot.com/2013/12/english-version-julius-schlosser.html
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