Heinrich Wölfflin

Heinrich Wölfflin (German: [ˈhaɪnʁɪç ˈvœlflɪn]; 21 June 1864, Winterthur – 19 July 1945, Zurich) was a Swiss art historian, whose objective classifying principles ("painterly" vs. "linear" and the like) were influential in the development of formal analysis in art history in the early 20th century. He taught at Basel, Berlin and Munich in the generation that raised German art history to pre-eminence. His three great books, still consulted, are Renaissance und Barock (1888), Die Klassische Kunst (1898, "Classic Art"), and Kunstgeschichtliche Grundbegriffe (1915, "Principles of Art History").

Wölfflin was born in Winterthur, Switzerland, and is buried there. His father, Eduard Wölfflin, was a professor of classical philology who taught at Munich University and helped found and organize the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae. Wölfflin studied art history and history with Jakob Burckhardt at the University of Basel, philosophy with Wilhelm Dilthey at Berlin University, and art history and philosophy at Munich University where his father had taught. He received his degree from Munich University in 1886 in philosophy, although he was already on a course to study the newly minted discipline of art history. Wölfflin's principal mentor, and the chair of his doctoral committee at the University of Munich, where Wölfflin got his doctoral degree was the renowned professor of archaeology, Heinrich Brunn. Greatly influenced by his mentors, particularly neo-Kantian Johannes Volkelt (Der Symbolbegriff) and Heinrich Brunn, his dissertation, Prolegomena zu einer Psychologie der Architektur (1886) attempted to show that architecture had a basis in form through the empathetic response of human form. It is considered now to be one of the founding texts of the emerging discipline of art history, although it was barely noted when it was published.

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