Kunsthistoriker cornelius gurlitt biography images

Subject Area s : architecture object genre , Baroque, and sculpture visual works. Architect and seminal architectural historian for the Baroque. Gurlitt hailed from an illustrious creative family of assimilated Jews. He was named for his great uncle, the well-known composer [Gustav] Cornelius Gurlitt The conductor and composer Manfred Gurlitt was also a relative.

He became a practicing architect in However he abandoned this to study art history, under Anton Springer in Leipzig. After seeing the Baroque architecture in Dresden, he realized how poor contemporary sources for Baroque art were. Appreciation for the baroque was at a low ebb; the style was almost universally regarded as decadent since the enlightenment writings of Francesco Milizia.

He toured Prague and Berlin studying additional examples of art of the period. Gurlitt joined the staff of the Dresden Kunstgewerbemuseum in In Gurlitt began publishing his survey of Baroque decorative arts in Germany, Das barock- und rococo-Ornament Deutschlands.

Portrait of the German art

To study the original Baroque examples, Gurlitt traveled to Italy where even there scholars greeted him with suspicion. The humble draughtsman he employed to make renderings refused to work on the art of that period. In he succeeded the late Richard Steche as associate professor professor of history at the practical arts.