Friedrich "Fritz" Saxl (8 January 1890,

Vienna Vienna ( ; ; ) is the capital city, capital, List of largest cities in Austria, most populous city, and one of Federal states of Austria, nine federal states of Austria. It is Austria's primate city, with just over two million inhabitants. ...

Austria Austria, formally the Republic of Austria, is a landlocked country in Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine Federal states of Austria, states, of which the capital Vienna is the List of largest cities in Aust ...

– 22 March 1948,

Dulwich Dulwich (; ) is an area in south London, England. The settlement is mostly in the London Borough of Southwark, with parts in the London Borough of Lambeth, and consists of Dulwich Village, East Dulwich, West Dulwich, and the Southwark half of H ...

, London) was the

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 ...

who was the guiding light of 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 ...

, especially during the long mental breakdown of its founder,

Aby Warburg Aby Moritz Warburg (June 13, 1866 – October 26, 1929) was a German art historian and cultural theorist who founded the ''Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg'' (Warburg Library for Cultural Studies), a private library, which was later m ...

, whom he succeeded as director.

Life and work

Saxl studied in his native Vienna under Franz Wickhoff,

Julius von Schlosser Julius Alwin Franz Georg Andreas Ritter von Schlosser (23 September 1866, Vienna – 1 December 1938, Vienna) was an Austrian art historian and an important member of the Vienna School of Art History. According to Ernst Gombrich, he was "One of th ...

and Max Dvořák, who oversaw his dissertation on

Rembrandt Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (; ; 15 July 1606 – 4 October 1669), mononymously known as Rembrandt was a Dutch Golden Age painter, printmaker, and Drawing, draughtsman. He is generally considered one of the greatest visual artists in ...

. Then in Berlin Saxl studied under

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 ...

, and spent 1912–13 researching in Italy for his only major work, a study of medieval illuminated manuscripts with astrological and mythological elements, marrying Elise Bienenfeld in 1913. He served in the

Austro-Hungarian army The Austro-Hungarian Army, also known as the Imperial and Royal Army,; was the principal ground force of Austria-Hungary from 1867 to 1918. It consisted of three organisations: the Common Army (, recruited from all parts of Austria-Hungary), ...

as a lieutenant on the Italian front for the duration of World War I. In 1913 Fritz Saxl had joined what was then the Warburg Library at the Warburg Haus, Hamburg as librarian, and he returned in 1919, also lecturing at the

University of Hamburg The University of Hamburg (, also referred to as UHH) is a public university, public research university in Hamburg, Germany. It was founded on 28 March 1919 by combining the previous General Lecture System ('':de:Allgemeines Vorlesungswesen, ...

from 1923. On Warburg's death in 1929 Saxl formally became director, although he had effectively been in charge for several years already. With the

Nazi regime Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a totalitarian dictat ...

in power, Saxl was instrumental in moving the Warburg Institute to safety in London in 1933, coming with it himself and settling in England, becoming a British citizen in 1940. His efforts at maintaining the Warburg Institute came at the cost of his own scholarly output, which was mostly restricted to papers and lectures. In 1946 Saxl founded the Census of Antique Works of Art and Architecture Known in the Renaissance together with art historian Richard Krautheimer and archaeologist Karl Lehmann."History of the ''Census''" In
http://www.census.de/census/project?set_language=en
/ref>

Main published works

* ''Verzeichnis astrologischer und mythologischer illustrierter Handschriften des lateinischen Mittelalters''. Vol. 1, Heidelberg: C. Winter, 1915, Vol. 2, Heidelberg: C. Winter, 1927, ols. 3 & 4, Meier, Hans, and Bober, Harry, and McGurk, Patrick.* ''English Sculpture of the 12th Century'', London: Faber & Faber 1954 * ''Lectures''. Vol. 1 & 2, London: Warburg Institute, 1957 * ''A Heritage of Images: A Selection of Lectures by Fritz Saxl''. Introduction by E. H. Gombrich. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, 1970 * ''The History of Warburg's Library.'' in: Gombrich, Aby Warburg. 2nd ed. Oxford : Phaidon Press, 1986, pp. 325–38 *''Gebärde, Form, Ausdruck'', vorgestellt von Pablo Schneider, Zürich-Berlin: diaphanes, 2010,

Letters

*''Ausreiten der Ecken. Die Aby Warburg – Fritz Saxl Korrespondenz 1910 bis 1919''. Ed. Dorothea McEwan. Munich 1998. . *''Wanderstrassen der Kultur. Die Aby Warburg – Fritz Saxl Korrespondenz 1920 bis 1929''. Ed. Dorothea McEwan. Munich 2004.

Notes

References

* Lee Sorensen, ed.
''Saxl, Fritz''
in th
''Dictionary of Art Historians''
* *

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Saxl, Fritz Austrian art historians English art historians Austrian expatriates in Germany Austrian expatriates in the United Kingdom Writers from Vienna 1890 births 1948 deaths Jewish emigrants from Nazi Germany to the United Kingdom Directors of the Warburg Institute