Michael David Kighley Baxandall, FBA (18 August 1933 – 12 August 2008) was a British

art historian Art history is the study of artistic works made throughout human history. Among other topics, it studies art’s formal qualities, its impact on societies and cultures, and how artistic styles have changed throughout history. Traditionally, the ...

and a professor emeritus of Art History at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

. He taught at the

Warburg Institute The Warburg Institute is a research institution associated with the University of London in central London, England. A member of the School of Advanced Study, its focus is the study of cultural history and the role of images in culture – cros ...

University of London The University of London (UoL; abbreviated as Lond or more rarely Londin in Post-nominal letters, post-nominals) is a collegiate university, federal Public university, public research university located in London, England, United Kingdom. The ...

, and worked as a curator at the

Victoria and Albert Museum The Victoria and Albert Museum (abbreviated V&A) in London is the world's largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.8 million objects. It was founded in 1852 and named after Queen ...

. His book ''Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy'' was profoundly influential in the social history of art, and is (2018) widely used as a textbook in college courses.

Career

Baxandall was born in

Cardiff Cardiff (; ) is the capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of Wales. Cardiff had a population of in and forms a Principal areas of Wales, principal area officially known as the City and County of Ca ...

, the only son of David Baxandall, a curator who was at one time director of the

National Gallery of Scotland The National (formerly the Scottish National Gallery) is the national art gallery of Scotland. It is located on The Mound in central Edinburgh, close to Princes Street. The building was designed in a neoclassical style by William Henry Playfa ...

. He went to

Manchester Grammar School The Manchester Grammar School (MGS) is a highly Selective school, selective Private_schools_in_the_United_Kingdom, private day school for boys aged 7-18 in Manchester, England, which was founded in 1515 by Hugh Oldham (then Bishop of Exeter). ...

and studied English at

Downing College, Cambridge Downing College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge and currently has around 950 students. Founded in 1800, it was the only college to be added to the university between 1596 and 1869, and is often described as the oldest of ...

, where he was taught by F. R. Leavis. In 1955 he departed for the Continent. He spent a year at

Pavia University The University of Pavia (, UNIPV or ''Università di Pavia''; ) is a university located in Pavia, Lombardy, Italy. There was evidence of teaching as early as 1361, making it one of the oldest universities in the world. It was the sole university ...

(1955–56), then taught at an international school in St. Gallen in Switzerland (1956–57), and finally went to Munich to hear the art historian Hans Sedlmayr and where he worked with Ludwig Heinrich Heydenreich on the court of

Urbino Urbino ( , ; Romagnol: ''Urbìn'') is a ''comune'' (municipality) in the Italy, Italian region of Marche, southwest of Pesaro, a World Heritage Site notable for a remarkable historical legacy of independent Renaissance culture, especially und ...

at the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte. On his return to London in 1958 he began a long association with the

, initially working in the photographic collection, where he met Kay Simon, whom he married in 1963. From 1959 to 1961 he was a junior fellow, working on his never-completed PhD, ''Restraint in Renaissance behaviour'', under

Ernst Gombrich Sir Ernst Hans Josef Gombrich (; ; 30 March 1909 – 3 November 2001) was an Austrian-born art historian who, after settling in England in 1936, became a naturalised British citizen in 1947 and spent most of his working life in the United Ki ...

. From 1961, he was Assistant Keeper in the Department of Architecture and Sculpture at the

, returning to the Warburg Institute in 1965 as lecturer in Renaissance Studies. He was appointed to a chair by the University of London in 1981, but increasingly spent his time in the United States. He was A. D. White Professor-at-Large at

Cornell University Cornell University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university based in Ithaca, New York, United States. The university was co-founded by American philanthropist Ezra Cornell and historian and educator Andrew Dickson W ...

and became a half-time Professor of the History of Art at the

, in 1987. He was elected a Fellow of the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (The Academy) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and other ...

in 1991. He was

Slade Professor of Fine Art The Slade Professorship of Fine Art is the oldest professorship of art and art history at the universities of Cambridge, Oxford and University College, London. History The chairs were founded concurrently in 1869 by a bequest from the art collect ...

at the

University of Oxford The University of Oxford is a collegiate university, collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the List of oldest un ...

for 1974–75.

Books

His book ''Giotto and the Orators'' was published in 1971. This was followed in 1972 by ''Painting and Experience in Fifteenth Century Italy'', now considered a classic of

art history Art history is the study of Work of art, artistic works made throughout human history. Among other topics, it studies art’s formal qualities, its impact on societies and cultures, and how artistic styles have changed throughout history. Tradit ...

, in which he developed the influential concept of the period eye. These were followed by ''The Limewood Sculptors of Renaissance Germany'' (1980), ''Patterns of Intention'' (1985), ''Tiepolo and the Pictorial Intelligence'' (1994, with Svetlana Alpers), ''Shadows and Enlightenment'' (1994) and ''Words for Pictures'' (2003). In all his work, Baxandall was concerned to illuminate artworks by a thorough exploration of the conditions of their production – intellectual, social, and physical. In ''Limewood Sculptors'' this took the form of using "carvings as lenses bearing on their own circumstances". Despite his impact in "social" art history, Baxandall often retreated from Marxist or overly "contextual" approaches. At one point, he declared that he was just "trying to do

Roger Fry Roger Eliot Fry (14 December 1866 – 9 September 1934) was an English painter and art critic, critic, and a member of the Bloomsbury Group. Establishing his reputation as a scholar of the Old Masters, he became an advocate of more recent ...

...in a different way," and he often cited the impact of

Heinrich Wölfflin Heinrich Wölfflin (; 21 June 1864 – 19 July 1945) was a Swiss art historian, esthetician and educator, whose objective classifying principles (" painterly" vs. "linear" and the like) were influential in the development of formal analysis in ...

's book ''Classic Art.''Shone, Richard and Stonard, John-Paul, eds.. ''The Books That Shaped Art History: From Gombrich and Greenberg to Alpers and Krauss''. London: Thames & Hudson, 2013.

Publications

* ''Giotto and the Orators. Humanist observers of painting in Italy and the discovery of pictorial composition 1350-1450,''

Oxford University Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the publishing house of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world. Its first book was printed in Oxford in 1478, with the Press officially granted the legal right to print books ...

, 1971 * ''Painting and Experience in 15th century Italy,'' Oxford UP, 1972 * ''The Limewood Sculptors of Renaissance Germany,''

Yale University Press Yale University Press is the university press of Yale University. It was founded in 1908 by George Parmly Day and Clarence Day, grandsons of Benjamin Day, and became a department of Yale University in 1961, but it remains financially and ope ...

, 1980 * ''Patterns of Intention: On the Historical Explanation of Pictures,'' Yale UP, 1985 * with Svetlana Alpers: ''Tiepolo and the Pictorial Intelligence,'' Yale UP, 1994 * ''Shadows and Enlightenment,'' Yale UP, 1995 * ''Words for Pictures: Seven Papers on Renaissance Art and Criticism,'' Yale UP, 2003 * ''Episodes: a Memory Book,'' with an introduction by Carlo Ginzburg, Frances Lincoln, 2010 * ''A Grasp of Kaspar,'' Frances Lincoln, 2010

On Baxandall

* ''Michael Baxandall, Vision and the Work of Words,'' ed. by Peter Mack & Robert Williams, Farnham, 2015

References

External links