Adolf Furtwängler Biography

Adolf Furtwängler

(Freiburg im Breisgau, 1853-Athens, 1907) German archaeologist.He participated in the excavations of Olympia and was a professor at the University of Munich.His works include Eros in vase painting (1874), Ancient gems (1900) and, especially, Masterpieces of Greek sculpture (1893).

Adolf Furtwängler

After having studied archeology, Adolf Furtwängler participated between 1878 and 1879 in the excavations of Olympia.In 1880 he was appointed deputy director of the Berlin Museum, where he carried out a Description of the vases collected in the Antiquarium of the Royal Museums of Berlin (1885).

After this work, he thought of a systematization and description of the set of precious stones from the Antiquarium, long neglected; Between the project and the publication of the three volumes of the work Ancient Gems (1900), some fifteen years passed, during which time Furtwängler published, in addition to other texts, Masterpieces of sculpture Greek (1893), fundamental book in the history of archeology; the method of criticism and the stylistic analysis of the copies appears applied in this work to the reconstitution of the originals of the old masters.A professor in Munich since 1894, Furtwängler went to Greece in 1901 to undertake a series of important excavations at Aegina, Amicles and Orcomenes, on which he worked until his death.

Masterpieces of Greek sculpture certainly represents an important stage in archeology: the passage from the history of art founded preferably on literary sources, which had found the most complete and perfect expression in the work of Heinrich Brunn, to the history of art that, in addition Following the references of ancient authors, he places the study of monuments in the foreground, trying to discover in the statues that have come to us the creations of the great masters remembered by Pliny the Elder and Pausanias.

Furtwängler thinks that the Roman copies represent a selection of those masterpieces of the classical period that were of general taste in the times of the most refined culture, and tries in this work to attribute the different statuary types, which They can be reconstructed thanks to the copies, to certain Greek artists, notably increasing the scarce series of identifications of masterpieces celebrated by the sources, and due especially to the intuition of JJ Winckelmann, EQ Visconti, Fea, Nibby, of Brunn and Friedrichs.

Furtwängler's method is based on criticism and stylistic analysis of copies, as well as on the distinction between copies, variations and reworkings; the critic also makes use of photography, which becomes a precious aid in studies.The work is composed of a series of analytical essays on the creations of certain artists.The first personality is Phidias, to whom Furtwängler attributes "Athena Lemnia", which he reconstructed after a torso from Dresden and a head from Bologna; it was one of the most successful attributions.

Furtwängler then goes on to consider the predecessors of Phidias, the master Hegias and his contemporary Alcamenes, attributing various statuary types to them.In addition to the "Pericles", he assigns the "Athena of Velletri", the "Diomedes of Munich" and the "Medusa Rondanini", and discovers works by Myron in various types and in a "Perseus".In successive chapters he investigates possible attributions to Policleto, Scopas, Praxiteles, Eufranor and Leocares.The work closes with themes of archaic sculpture, such as the throne of Apollo Amicleo and the chest of Cipselo.

The method of Adolf Furtwängler, which has certain analogies with that of Morelli, obtained notable results, promoting formal analysis, typological distinction and the search for a style by the system of referring to a certain personality.Today, however, many of its attributions have been rejected in light of new discoveries and a refinement of aesthetic criticism.

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