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The Birth of Late Antiquity: Riegl and Strzygowski in 1901 Jas´ Elsner Introduction 1901 saw the publication of two ground-breaking books which between them established the history of late antique art as an academic discipline. They were Alois Riegl’s fundamental contribution to art history, Spa ¨ tro ¨ mische Kunst- industrie, or Late Roman Art Industry (perhaps better translated as Late Roman Arts and Crafts) and Josef Strzygowski’s Orient oder Rom. Together, these books set up the categories and methods by which the development of Roman art and the rise of medieval art would be studied for almost the rest of the century. Indeed, Riegl has been credited as having introduced the term Spa ¨ tantike (‘late antique’) into archaeological studies. 1 The two books together – and the fierce polemic between their authors in the years that followed – were effectively the spring- board for the modern discipline of late-antique art history. 2 One might say, however, that despite its influence, Riegl’s book especially resembles Chekhov’s play The Cherry Orchard. This was the first great masterpiece of twentieth- century theatre, but it is really the work of a nineteenth-century thinker, whose most important book for our purposes happens to have strayed across the line past 1900. 2001 saw the death of Ernst Gombrich (b. 1909), the greatest surviving representative of pre-World War II Austro-German Kunstgeschichte, a man who (like Riegl) really belonged to the century before that in which he died. Gombrich was born after Riegl’s death in 1905, but his work was profoundly informed by the need to negotiate the aftermath of the art-historical contributions of 1901 – not just the specific importance of late-antique art, 3 but also the methodological problems of Riegl’s theoretical concept of Kunstwollen. 4 Indeed, one of Gombrich’s first seminars as a student in Vienna turned into an attack on Riegl’s first book, Stilfragen, 5 while some of his first published work cut his critical teeth against Spa ¨ tro ¨ mische Kunstindustrie and its followers inaugurating what would be a life-long and yet partly affectionate battle with the legacy of Riegl. 6 Like others with whom I shall be concerned (notably Ernst Kitzinger), Gombrich himself, Riegl and Strzygowski were all natives of Vienna or practised their art history there. If this paper is a genuflection to a significant Art History ISSN 0141-6790 Vol. 25 No. 3 June 2002 pp. 358–379 358 ß Association of Art Historians 2002. Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
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The Birth of Late Antiquity: Riegl andStrzygowski in 1901

Jas Elsner

Introduction

1901 saw the publication of two ground-breaking books which between themestablished the history of late antique art as an academic discipline. They wereAlois Riegl's fundamental contribution to art history, SpaÈ troÈ mische Kunst-industrie, or Late Roman Art Industry (perhaps better translated as Late RomanArts and Crafts) and Josef Strzygowski's Orient oder Rom. Together, these booksset up the categories and methods by which the development of Roman art andthe rise of medieval art would be studied for almost the rest of the century. Indeed,Riegl has been credited as having introduced the term SpaÈ tantike (`late antique')into archaeological studies.1 The two books together ± and the fierce polemicbetween their authors in the years that followed ± were effectively the spring-board for the modern discipline of late-antique art history.2 One might say,however, that despite its influence, Riegl's book especially resembles Chekhov'splay The Cherry Orchard. This was the first great masterpiece of twentieth-century theatre, but it is really the work of a nineteenth-century thinker, whosemost important book for our purposes happens to have strayed across the linepast 1900.

2001 saw the death of Ernst Gombrich (b. 1909), the greatest survivingrepresentative of pre-World War II Austro-German Kunstgeschichte, a man who(like Riegl) really belonged to the century before that in which he died. Gombrichwas born after Riegl's death in 1905, but his work was profoundly informed bythe need to negotiate the aftermath of the art-historical contributions of 1901 ±not just the specific importance of late-antique art,3 but also the methodologicalproblems of Riegl's theoretical concept of Kunstwollen.4 Indeed, one ofGombrich's first seminars as a student in Vienna turned into an attack onRiegl's first book, Stilfragen,5 while some of his first published work cut hiscritical teeth against SpaÈ troÈ mische Kunstindustrie and its followers ±inaugurating what would be a life-long and yet partly affectionate battle withthe legacy of Riegl.6 Like others with whom I shall be concerned (notably ErnstKitzinger), Gombrich himself, Riegl and Strzygowski were all natives of Viennaor practised their art history there. If this paper is a genuflection to a significant

Art History ISSN 0141-6790 Vol. 25 No. 3 June 2002 pp. 358±379

358 ß Association of Art Historians 2002. Published by Blackwell Publishers,108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.

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centenary for late antiquity, it is equally a salute to the passing of the mostmagisterial, indeed dominant, art-historical voice of the third quarter of thetwentieth century.

In weighing down my introduction with so venerable a series of anniversariesand Great Names, I want to emphasize something about art history as a wholewhich this cluster of Viennese still has to offer. Theirs is, in every case, acommitted empiricism acutely centred on the discussion of objects, but alwaysdirected beyond the small questions. The minor issues of specific patronage,execution, significance or interpretation in any one object or group of objects,while not neglected or ignored, are always (rightly in my view) subordinate tomuch larger problems about the cultural meaning of art itself, grounded in anddirected by a (more or less) rigorously worked-out philosophical thesis. It is theidealism ± but also the dangers ± in the conviction that the analysis of objects canlead us to large-scale cultural understandings of a non-trivial kind that is a qualitywell worth remembering today.

Riegl and Strzygowski

Comparing Riegl and Strzygowski is difficult, not least because the former (nowmuch studied in his own right) is in every sense an art-historical hero,7 while thelatter has been condemned ± beyond simply a judgement of his scholarship ± tothat grim circle of the Inferno inhabited by outspoken adherents of the 1000 YearReich. Riegl's hero status in art history rests on several foundations.8 First he was(and remains) an early and magisterial champion of the decorative arts as a majorhistorical field within art history.9 His works on Oriental carpets10 (of which hewas for twelve years the curator in the Austrian Museum of Art and Industry, theHapsburg equivalent of the V&A) engaged with the Arts and Crafts Movementand with the seminal contributions (both in Germany and briefly in England) ofGottfried Semper, with whom Riegl regularly disagreed in print.11 Thesepublications attempted to tie the ornamentation of textiles to a great continuoustradition descended from Graeco-Roman antiquity.12 His Stilfragen, or Problemsof Style, published in 1893, was a fundamental development and restatement ofthis theme ± demonstrating the continuity of traditions of ornament throughoutantiquity and the middle ages (going back to Ancient Egyptian lotus motifs) andproviding a model for diachronic ornamental transformation.

Secondly, in addition to his championship of late-antique and early medievalart against the general view of decline (to which we shall come later), Rieglformulated ± initially in Stilfragen but most maturely and influentially inSpaÈ troÈ mische Kunstindustrie13 ± what would become one of the most importantand controversial concepts in twentieth-century German art history, namely theidea of Kunstwollen. This term has been frequently translated, frequentlydiscussed and frequently criticized. Otto PaÈ cht, in an acute and sympatheticdiscussion of Riegl (who was, with Franz Wickhoff, one of the twin founders ofthe great Vienna School of stylistic art history,14 from which PaÈ cht was himselfbanished by the Nazis in 1933 and to which he returned from England ± a rareemigre reinstated, in 1963) tries the following: `Shall we say artistic will, form-

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will, or as Gombrich suggests `̀ will-to-form''?' He himself prefers `that whichwills art' and calls it `the cipher for the generating and controlling factor inartistic creation . . . applied by Riegl equally to an individual work of art, to anindividual artist, to an historical period, to an ethnic group or to a nation'.15

Otto Brendel, another (though non-Jewish) mid-century exile from German arthistory,16 in his Prolegomena to the Study of Roman Art, which constitutes themajor critical discussion in English of Riegl's specific contribution to late-antique art history, rejected `the literal translation, `̀ artistic volition'' ' andpreferred `stylistic intent'.17 Edgar Wind, a third refugee of the same period,offered `autonomous formal impulse'.18 Indeed, by the 1920s there were Neo-Kantian and Neo-Hegelian interpretations of Kunstwollen. The former(espoused, for instance, by Panofsky and Wind) saw it as an immanentmeaning whereby each work of art invokes the whole culture from which itcomes through its style; the latter (expressed, for instance, by Hans Sedlmayr)believed it to be a central and informing principle of creativity, a kind of `deepstructure'.19 As these attempts show, Riegl's art history has always been bothdifficult and controversial. It certainly stood at the determinist end of historicalevolutionism, and was implicated in what later became called Geistesgeschichte± universal history of the human spirit. It is precisely to this ± and to the factthat no one could provide an adequate (non-mystical ) account of Kunstwollen± that Gombrich objected when he attacked Riegl and his legacy in Art andIllusion.20

The explicit teleology of Riegl's historicism has caused problems, particularlyfor those wedded to a Gombrichian making-and-matching kind of art history(itself indebted to Popper's philosophy of scientific experimentation).21 At thesame time Riegl's consistent devotion to a cultural (rather than a social) contextfor the production of art, as opposed to notions of artistic genius or incompetence,seems strikingly modern. Riegl argued that: `Since the work of art is not madewith our taste in mind, we can extract its true content only by reference to thepremises on which it was made.'22

He was effectively a pioneer not only of the study of the viewing of art,23 butalso in the relativism of reception in different periods and in the specificdifferentiation of our own responses as art historians and viewers from those of anobject's intended or likely audience. In its Viennese cultural context, this was anattempt to write an objective art history which could nonetheless incorporate theproblem of subjectivity ± a scientific approach parallel with contemporary workin the same city by the likes of Husserl and Freud.24

Thirdly, in his roles as editor of the journal of the Central Commission for theResearch and Preservation of Austrian Monuments (from 1902) and asConservator General of Austrian Monuments (from 1903),25 Riegl became apioneer in issues of conservation and the preservation of condemned buildings.26

Moreover, all this activity (in which he was in the vanguard for his time) was tiedto a genuinely multicultural politics in the context of late Hapsburg imperialism,which set him firmly apart from the pan-German nationalism and ethnicallypurist art history which developed rapidly at precisely this time and would so soondescend into Nazism.27 He was, in effect, on all fronts a genuine intellectualhero,28 whose attitudes are so dangerously close to the kinds we might wish to

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emulate as to make him worryingly appropriable as `our contemporary' (to useJan Kott's famous phrase about Shakespeare).29

This makes his work difficult to assess for precisely the opposite reasons tothose that give us problems with Strzygowski (1862±1941). The latter's art historyis patently racist and tainted by his sympathy with what we would now see as adespicable regime. It might be said, however, that nothing in Strzygowski'sexperience, up to his death in 1941, would remotely have given him the hint thathe was on what is so obviously to us the wrong side of every ethical debate toaffect the humanities. Strzygowski's career, as an outsider to traditional Austro-German academic life ± both on account of his origins on the outer reaches of theAustrian empire in mainly Polish Silesia and as a cloth manufacturer's son ± is aclassic case of making one's name by assaulting the establishment.30 Possessed inaddition to his flair for `knocking copy' with what Suzanne Marchand describesas an `odious personality',31 nonetheless ± in part on account of his wide travels inthe east, remarkable first-hand knowledge of objects and extraordinarily prolificpublications ± Strzygowski made it, first to the Chair at Graz and finally, in 1909,to Wickhoff's Chair at the centre of the establishment in Vienna where thepersonal patronage of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand (who also held pan-Germanic views) seems to have prevailed against significant opposition.32 Beforewe move specifically to the debate with Riegl, it is worth stressing Strzygowski'slong-term contributions to art history, since he has frequently been excluded fromhistories of art-historical thought,33 presumably not only on account of his politicsbut also his personal character.34 Strzygowski attacked the largely philologicalClassical humanist establishment on several fronts. First he made great play of theOriental origins of late-antique and medieval art, which he ultimately located inIran and linked to Aryan and Nordic tendencies, as opposed to those of theMediterranean.35 Stripped of its proto-Nazi politics, the influence of this approachhas been fundamental to the establishment of the history of Islamic art, to thestudy of image production on the eastern peripheries of the Roman empire, with aview to resisting Romano-centrism; and, most ironically, to the study of Jewishart, in which Strzygowski has been hailed as a pioneer.36 Moreover, his insistenceon World Art as the proper field for art history (rather than European art) hasnumerous modern ramifications in the discipline's recent turn in that direction.37

Methodologically, and anticipating a debate still current in art history,Strzygowksi attacked the literary domination of Classical art history byemphasizing a vast and specialized knowledge of artefacts.38 In effect, he is aprecursor of the highly laudable attempt to let the object speak for itself againstthe textual bias of the historian, to fight the battle of the image against the word.Despite his dire political views, if we uphold any aspects of these intellectualpositions, we remain Strzygowski's children.

SpaÈ troÈ mische Kunstindustrie and Riegl's late Roman method

The SpaÈ troÈ mische Kunstindustrie opens by putting all the most radical andrevisionist cards in Riegl's hand firmly on the table.39 He begins by stating that thevolume before the reader (the first part of what he there says would be a two-part

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project, although this had already been distilled down from a collaborative five-part enterprise)40 will address `the function of the fine arts during the five and ahalf centuries between Constantine the Great and Charlemagne' by discovering`the connecting threads which lead back to past antiquity' (p. 3). This is alreadyinnovative as he explicitly proceeds by looking back (teleologically) rather thanpretending to write a chronological history, as is more normal. He states withsome exaggeration (but also some justification) that the `fine arts of the end of theRoman empire' are `a completely unresearched field' (p. 6). Within four pages ofthe Introduction, he is attacking not only the `unbridgeable gap between lateRoman art and the art of preceding Classical antiquity', which had generally beentaken for granted, but also the assumption of decline, stating that `everyone agreesthat late Roman art did not constitute progress but merely decay.' (p. 8) Heannounces that `to destroy this prejudice is the principal object of all the studiescontained in this book.' (p. 8) To do this he invokes his own earlier Stilfragen andthe demonstration there of a continuity between the ornamental tendrildecoration of the Byzantines and Saracens and that of Classical antiquity (p. 9).After a brief attack on Semper as representing a mechanistic and scientific theoryof art which overstressed the importance of materials, he launches the notion ofKunstwollen (as first invoked in the Stilfragen) on the unsuspecting reader.Kunstwollen is defined as follows:

A teleological approach according to which I saw in the work of art theresult of a specific and consciously purposeful artistic will (Kunstwollen)that comes through in a battle against function, raw material andtechnique. In this theory, the latter three factors no longer have the positivecreative role that the so-called Semperian theory gave them, but rather alimiting, negative one. They constitute, as it were, the co-efficients offriction within the whole. (p. 9)

Crucial to Riegl's attempt to deny decline was the work of his fellow studentand then academic colleague, Franz Wickhoff (1853±1909). Drawing his owninspiration from Riegl's Stilfragen (published in 1893), Wickhoff had argued in abook published in 1895 on the Vienna Genesis (a great illuminated manuscriptnow dated to the sixth century, but then thought to be from the fourth or fifth)41

that late-antique forms were far from a decline but rather developed a newopticality within the traditions of Roman art.42 Wickhoff suggested that aspects ofRoman imperial, including late-antique, art resembled the work of seventeenth-century painters, such as Velazquez or Rembrandt, and the contemporaryImpressionists.43 Riegl disagreed with such transhistoricism, arguing that itrobbed late Roman art of a definition special and specific to it, and reflectedsimply the subjectivity of modern taste (pp. 10±11, cf. 70±1). But what heborrowed from Wickhoff was the positive evaluation of Roman and late-antiqueart and the notion of its continuity with (although its transformation from) theimage-making of the preceding era (an idea Wickhoff had in turn extrapolatedfrom Stilfragen and turned to use in late-antique studies).44

Riegl now proposed to subject the totality of the arts and crafts in his chosenperiod ± including architecture, sculpture, painting, mosaics and all the minor and

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decorative arts ± to a rigorous stylistic analysis in order to extrapolate theircollective Kunstwollen.45 He thus presupposed a shared and essential urge tocreativity within the period; indeed, it is on the basis of this assumption that theperiod could be defined as an historically meaningful era. Methodologically, it isinteresting that he regarded the materials of his analysis (what he called the`function, raw material and technique' of objects) as not significant in themselves.That is, the object of Riegl's formal analysis was style itself,46 while the rawmaterials (such as wood and stone), the functions of objects (for instance, use as afibula, holder of remains and so forth) and the technique of their working(carving, casting, weaving etc) were just the `co-efficient of friction' to be writtenout of the equation. It was the style that existed independently of the ways thatobjects were worked that could reveal the nature of the `Late RomanKunstwollen' as a whole (which is the title of his concluding chapter, pp. 223±34). What is ambiguous is whether stylistic analysis is to be employed in its ownright, or for such mundane matters as dating and the identification of artists; orwhether its true purpose lies in aid of the much grander project of pinpointing thetraces of an historically identifiable and definable collective subjectivity (asimplied in the last chapter of SpaÈ troÈ mische Kunstindustrie). In part, it is thegrandeur and ambition of this vision of art history as a whole which has wonRiegl so many admirers, though the palpable impossibility of the project hasequally attracted numerous critics.

It is impossible, in a short space, to do justice to the wonderful individualanalyses of objects, carefully described in a model of stylistic art-historicalwriting to lead incrementally to the definition of the late Roman Kunstwollen.47

The specific nature of Riegl's definitions are perhaps less important today, overa century after their formulation, than the fact that they effectively created theformalistic language that would later come to define late-antique art (I amthinking of issues like symmetry, frontality, rigidity, opticality, symbolizationand so forth). But a brief list of the range of what Riegl saw as the relevantempirical materials is perhaps in order. He moves from architecture (comparingbuildings like the Pantheon and Sta Costanza, or the oblong hall of the Baths ofCaracalla and the Basilica of Maxentius) to its particular constituents ± such asthe capitals of Diocletian's Mausoleum at Split and those of San Vitale inRavenna. In sculpture he assesses pagan and Christian sarcophagi fromRavenna and Rome, state reliefs in the city of Rome, portraits and ivories, aswell as some Coptic reliefs. Under painting he explores the early mosaics ofRome and those of Ravenna and the late-antique manuscripts (pagan andChristian); in the minor and decorative arts, all manner of brooches, fibulae,gems and glass vessels. What this list reveals is remarkable catholicism aboutthe range of objects to be included (though one wonders what happened tosilver plate) but equally a profoundly narrow focus around the productions andremains of late Roman Italy (with the exception of the decorative arts, many ofwhich were archaeological finds from within the Austro-Hungarian empire).While Riegl was, remarkably for his time, never racial in his ascription ofKunstwollen (unlike some of his successors, like Sedlmayr) the Roman focuswas ± from the perspective of late Hapsburg Vienna ± very much a project onthe origins and development of Holy Rome.48

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To take one example, we could do worse than look at the Arch of Constantine(constructed 312±5) with which Riegl opens his account of sculpture (chap. 2) andto which his text regularly returns (plate 29).49 This is a key monument because,since the Renaissance, its pointed juxtaposition of late-antique and second-century sculpted reliefs had occasioned polemical disparagement of theConstantinian work. Raphael, c. 1519, in a letter composed by Castiglione andsent to the Pope, had written of the fourth-century carvings on the arch as `veryfeeble and destitute of all art and good design' by contrast with the Trajanic,Hadrianic and Antonine work which he called `extremely fine and done in perfectstyle'. Vasari agreed. In the programmatic preface to his Lives 5 (1568), hemourned the decline of the arts exemplified by the Arch of Constantine usingwords like `rude', `crude' and `poor' to describe the fourth-century friezes.50 Noone had contested these judgements, and indeed ± referring briefly to theConstantinian sculptures on the Arch of Constantine in his earlier work ± Riegltoo had called them `crude and awkward' and `weak'.51 In SpaÈ troÈ mischeKunstindustrie all this changed. Riegl subjected the so-called largitio orcongiarium relief on the north face of the Arch of Constantine, showing theemperor distributing largesse to the populace of Rome (plates 30 and 31), to themost rigorous analysis it had yet received (pp. 52±4). Here, for the sake ofsampling Riegl's style of argument close-at-hand is a substantial segment of hisdiscussion.

29 The Arch of Constantine, north face, AD 312±5. Rome. Photo: German ArchaeologicalInstitute in Rome

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A brief look at the relief shows that the artist saw his responsiblity to bethe making of an individual unit with a centralized composition on theplane; here we have still an ancient plane composition and not a modernspace composition. The symmetrical centralization, which can only beachieved on the plane, appears here brought to its peak. The enthronedfigure of the emperor in the centre attracts the view immediately; indeed,the first superficial impression, prior to all detailed analysis showsconvincingly that the entire composition was painstakingly designed tobring the beholder's attention to the centre. The emperor who appears hereenthroned on a high socle and turned en face to the beholder, assumes thusthe most favoured position for a symmetrical view of the whole humanbody; his torso (and probably also the head, unfortunately cut off), remainsin a perpendicular position, . . . arms and feet diverging slightly to theoutside. This strictly symmetrical composition presents the central figure asan image of rigid unchangeable mobility. The domineering position isfurthermore emphasized through the fact that it occupies the entire heightof the relief thanks to the imposing figure of the emperor and the highsocle under the throne, while the other figures are distributed over twolevels in symmetrical correspondence. Differing from the central figure(with the exception of some figures standing at a distance on the right-handside), all the other figures are about to make definite movements towardsthe centre by turning the head as well as the raised arm in acclamation tothe emperor while the artist was at least able to add some variety to theuniform gestures. A certain exception is found in the two groups of fourfigures each, which are in the upper register near the corners; they do nottake part in the acclamation and constitute in themselves a symmetricalcomposition. They are, however, at the same time standing in strictcorrespondence with one another and thus, again, brought into dependenceon the all-domineering central figure of the emperor.While the entity appears to be projected on one plane with painstaking

precision, the individual figures strive towards spatial isolation from thecommon plane. The outlines of the figures are all deeply undercut so thatthey appear nowhere visibly connected with the ground. In the upper rankthere are two rows of figures arranged behind one another and isolated

30 Largitio relief from the Arch of Constantine, north face, AD 312±5. Photo: After Riegl,SpaÈ troÈ mische Kunstindustrie, figure 7.

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from one another at least as sharply. This is a decisive point wherein theConstantinian differ from ancient Oriental and Classical reliefs; during theearlier Empire it was still an inviable law for any relief to maintain anobvious tactile connection, whether directly or through intermediate figures.The common plane consequently now loses its formal tactile connectionand falls apart into a series of light figures and dark spatial shadows inbetween them, which all together evoke a colouristic impression throughtheir irregular change. Yet the impression continues to be one of asymmetrically designed plane; but now it is no longer a tactile plane, whichis either entirely interrupted or just slightly obscured through half shadows,but rather an optical plane like the one where all objects appear to our eyefrom the long view. Between the visible foreground plane of the figures and

31 Page 46 of Riegl, SpaÈ troÈ mische Kunstindustrie.

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the ground is a free sphere of space, so to say, a niche, inserted just deepenough to let the figures appear in it. They are space-filling and surroundedby space and, for that reason, still close to the plane.Exactly the same relation as between the entire relief and the figure is

sought to exist between a whole figure and its parts (this can be theextremities or also the drapery). Yet a strict centralization was possible justfor the central figure; in all the other figures it would come close and wasexpressed as much as possible with simple, straight, inarticulated andunrhythmic ± hence harsh ± yet clear outlines of figures spread broadly onthe plane. However, the individual parts of the figures are separated fromone another through grooves casting deep shadows, which is very obviousin the treatment of hair and drapery. As the figures to the whole, so alsothe extremities and the draperies do not have a tactile connection with thefigures, but are optically isolated from one another . . .The analysis of the Constantinian reliefs represents consequently full

proof that relief sculpture at the beginning of the late Roman periodfollowed exactly the same leading law as we established for thedevelopment of contemporary architecture. Among the other reliefs fromthe triumphal arch under discussion the representation of Constantineaddressing the people comes closest; the subject of the other reliefs (mostlywar scenes) demanded that the figures move in one way; a strictcentralization, as we have observed it, was not possible here. Therefore,symmetry was in such cases predominantly sought through a series, eventhough one cannot fail to recognize also a tendency toward a centralizedcondensation into the symmetry of the contrast. (pp. 52±4)

From a modern perspective, one might worry about how much work one poorsegment of Roman stone was being asked to do in this ruthless analysis. In anearly example of modern art-historical method, Riegl published his account withthe image inserted into the text (plate 31) ± and indeed prefaced his descriptionwith an apology of how the photograph from which he was writing slightlyabbreviated the actual relief (p. 52). Like other kinds of programmaticdescriptions of art (I am thinking, for instance, of Foucault's Las Meninas orLacan's Ambassadors),52 Riegl's discussion is effectively a transmutation of theobject into his own code and a metamorphosis of it towards the specific ends hehas in mind. In his case, empirical observation is translated through descriptioninto a pervasive formalism (which was, in fact, to establish all the major stylisticcriteria for late-antique art ± such as centralized composition on the plane;symmetry, `here . . . brought to its peak'; imperial elevation; frontality; the deepundercutting of figures). But the key methodological point is unstated and onlyenacted. This one relief will stand for all the others (a point which the wriggling ofthe last paragraph quoted above is intended to enforce), and `exactly the samerelation as between the entire relief and the figures is sought to exist between awhole figure and its parts.' It is on the basis that one can make the jumpsnecessary to grasp this `deep structure', that Riegl can then smoothly argue thatrelief sculpture `followed exactly the same leading law' as he had established forarchitecture. This principle, that there is a single volition expressed through style

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and form which is the same, whatever is being analysed, not just within a work ofart but within all the works of art in a given epoch, is an unproven andunprovable axiom on which rests both the grandeur and the folly of RieglianKunstwollen. But what matters here is that we can see it at work in the very smallscale of Riegl's individual discussions (and here Kunstwollen as an abstractconcept has not been named) as well as in his grand conclusions.

At this point in the argument, before he had actually come to makegeneralizations about the Constantinian Kunstwollen but it had already effectivelybeen postulated as the a priori basis of the argument, Riegl turned to decline.

The aesthetic evaluation of the Constantinian relief was generally notdisputed, because it was universally agreed that these reliefs were a primewitness for the deepest decline of art. Among the most lenient apologieswere that the Arch of Constantine had been built in great haste as evidentby the re-use of particular reliefs from earlier monuments. The mainproponents of this opinion [i.e. the adherents of decline] will be surprisedto see that in different works very particular and positive principles ofstyle, as just demonstrated, are followed meticulously. Yet these principlesof style are not the ones of Classical art; and because until now the reliefshave been assessed by the yardstick of classical antiquity, they have beenfound wanting . . . The Constantinian reliefs have always been consideredto lack precisely what was essential to the Classical reliefs. That is,beautiful animation. The figures seemed ugly on the one hand, and clumsyand motionless on the other. It seemed justifiable to declare them if not thevery handiwork of barbarians then at least the products of barbarizedcraftsmen. As far as beauty goes, we do indeed miss the proportions whichcompare every part according to size and motion with other parts and withthe whole; but in its place, we have found another form of beauty which isexpressed in the strictest symmetrical conception and which we might callcrystalline because it constitutes the first and eternal principal form for theinanimated raw material and because it comes comparatively closest toabsolute beauty (material individuality). This however can only beimagined. Barbarians would have represented the proportional principle ofthe beauty coming down from Classical art with misunderstood and cruderexpressions. The creators of the Constantinian reliefs have replaced itthrough another and have thus demonstrated independent Kunstwollen . . .(pp. 54±5).

Quite apart from the attack on decline, and the discursive choice to raise thisto the highest level with all the talk of beauty, eternal principles, even absolutebeauty, Riegl chose precisely this sforzando of rhetorical effusion to introduceKunstwollen. It appears here as the independent Constantinian product of theanalytically observed qualities of the largitio relief, something both historicallytrue in its own time and analytically true of Riegl's own objectivizing formalisticdescription. But as we have seen, Kunstwollen was also the methodologicalpremise for getting to where we have arrived. It is perhaps best seen as a kind ofaesthetic homology, whereby the qualities of the relations of the parts to each

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other reflect those of the part to the whole and of the whole to all the other art ofthe period. It may be that we can always replace the term Kunstwollen in Rieglwith style, Christopher Wood suggests,53 but this would be to deprive it of theaesthetic, instinctive, perceptual and pre-conceptual qualities with which Rieglwants to imbue it. By the time Riegl had reached the end of SpaÈ troÈ mischeKunstindustrie, he was in a position (effectively a rhetorical position, dependenton all the discussion that had gone before) to generalize about the characteristicsof the late Roman Kunstwollen as if they had an independent and objectiveexistence outside his discussion: aesthetic homologies, practised on the minutescale within monuments and on the larger scale across monuments, could result ina generalization whose truth-value lay in its revealing history. Effectively, objects± analysed purely from a formal point of view and compared ± could be made torender history as effectively as documentary sources. The invocation of textualsources ± the Neoplatonists and especially St Augustine ± in the last chapter of thebook (entitled, `The Main Characteristics of the Late Roman Kunstwollen') isRiegl's way of signalling this feat.

Having established his independent Constantinian Kunstwollen, Riegl gavebirth to the independence of late antiquity as a specific period of historical study.Two key questions remained. First, in terms of the Arch of Constantine, howcould works of art derived from different Kunstwollens (namely second- andfourth-century) be juxtaposed? In part because of his conviction that one was thenatural development of the other (though radically different from it), this questionwas not a problem for Riegl; indeed the very existence of the Arch of Constantinewas empirical proof that there was not a problem here (pp. 101±102). Second, in akey question which would remain a resounding challenge to the whole of GermanClassical art history for the next two generations, Riegl asked: `How was thischange made possible? Does any bridge lead back from Constantine to Classicalart?' (p. 57) Riegl's attempt to sketch an answer (pp. 57±83) ± extending backthrough Egyptian and Greek art ± concluded that a `necessary precondition' wasan `exact insight' into the arts of the `middle Empire' (p. 78). He himself madeonly a few stabs at discussing late Antonine and Severan images, but commentedthat `whoever has the opportunity to look at an almost complete series of Romanimperial portraits in marble will have gained the impression that Marcus Aureliusconstitutes a deep division.' (p. 79)

This was to be prophetic ± or perhaps, more in keeping with Rieglianteleology ± it was to sketch the outlines of what Riegl's successors would colour inas a detailed image of late Antonine art, which was specifically given the role ofanticipating the Arch of Constantine.54 Large parts of the careers of some ofRiegl's major successors in the north German tradition ± especially Max Wegnerand Gerhart Rodenwaldt ± were to be devoted to describing the `late AntonineStilwandel' (or transformation of styles).55 Ranuccio Bianchi Bandinelli (himself amajor student of this great German tradition) described late Antonine art as `thebeginning of a wholly new concept, something destined to culminate in a genuinebreak with tradition . . . the origins of the so-called SpaÈ tantike, the art of lateantiquity in its pre-medieval phase'.56 Indeed, the race to find the origins of lateantiquity led a series of great art historians on an ever earlier hunt for the keytransformative monument (an evolutionary missing link). By mid-century, Karl

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Lehmann had proposed the Column of Trajan,57 Rodenwaldt the circus relieffrom Ostia,58 Charles Rufus Morey the Arch of Titus.59

This brief sketch of the reception of Riegl's work demonstrates its success inestablishing the independence of late-antique (as opposed to specificallyChristian) art within the German art-historical tradition. Moreover, by directingscholarly attention to the internal development of Roman art, Riegl implied thatit was unnecessary to look elsewhere ± for instance, outside the Roman world ±for a causal explanation of change. Rather there was one dynamic process withinthe tradition of changing Roman imperial Kunstwollen (at war with thelimitations of materials within any given cultural context) that produced specificarts of specific styles. Here his influence was fundamental and appears not onlyin the German school of Wegner and Rodenwaldt (as well as Lehmann) butequally in major scholars from diverse other educational contexts such as BianchiBandinelli (Italian), Hans Peter L'Orange (Norwegian) and Morey (American).Where Riegl lost ± specifically among those that might be called his own disciples± was in his positive and polemical stand for late antiquity as a progressive artagainst the prophets of decline. The new spirit of the SpaÈ tantike was rapidlysubsumed back into the Renaissance language of decadence. So, for instance,Bernard Berenson's famous assault on the Arch of Constantine, which containsseveral laudatory references to Riegl and is, in fact, thoroughly in Riegl's debt inseeing the arch within a Romano-centric process of artistic production,nonetheless reverses Riegl's notion of progress and replaces it with Raphael'sand Vasari's polemic against decline.60 Likewise Bianchi Bandinelli, in one of themore over-the-top paragraphs of Rome: The Centre of Power writes of late-antique art as the congruence of `formal abstraction, decomposition of organicforms, and an irrational reliance on metaphysical solutions for the world'sproblems'.61

Secondly, what Riegl had envisaged as the broad multicultural melting pot ofimperial Rome (itself an idealizing multicultural, and hence in its contemporarycontext a political, image of the Holy Roman empire of his own time) couldequally be more narrowly defined as Roman or Italic in a racial sense. In theIntroduction to SpaÈ troÈ mische Kunstindustrie, Riegl had explicitly written:

In selecting the word `Roman' instead of `antique' I had in mind the entireRoman empire but not ± as I wish to emphasize strongly from the outsetthe city of Rome or the Italic people or the nations of the western half ofthe empire. (p. 14)

Yet rapidly this was turned into a national problem, especially in the German ratherthan Austro-Hungarian reception of Riegl.62 For German art history, with itsfundamentally philhellenic prejudices (reaching back to Winckelmann), the Italiannature of Roman art was an aid to the theorists of decline, since it representedsouthern decadence by contrast with the Nordic spirit. As nationalism (as well asovert racism) began to permeate scholarship in the 1920s and 1930s, figures such asJohannes Sieveking and Carl Weickert tried ever more precisely to define the Italicelements in Roman art and to identify a national spirit in Roman production whichwas at the same time a cause for the disintegration of Greek forms.63

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The Oriental thesis and some reverberations

Meanwhile, in the same year that Riegl published SpaÈ troÈ mische Kunstindustrie,Strzygowski producedOrient oder Rom. Using an entirely different body of visualmaterial from Riegl (and arguably a more adventurous one) ± Palmyrene paintings(e.g. plate 32) and sculptures, the sarcophagi of Asia Minor, early Christian ivoriesfrom Egypt and Coptic textiles ± Strzygowski mounted an argument for theorigins of Christian and late-antique art which was polemically directed againstWickhoff's Vienna Genesis book. The persistent attack on Wickhoff, beginning inthe first paragraph of the `Einleitung' on page 1, dominates the entire introduction(pp. 1±10) and informs the shape of the book. Strzygowski claimed that the

32 Fresco from the House of the Three Brothers, Palmyra. Perhaps AD3rd century. Photo: After Strzygowski, Orient oder Rom, page 16, figure 3.

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changes in late-antique art and the rise ofChristian art were not a Romandevelopment but rather the pervasiveand malicious influence of the East, risenagain from its slumbers after centuries ofGreek dominance to destroy the Hellenictradition.64 Denying any coherent orunitary `individual culture' or `nationalart' to the `colourless mass-culture of theRoman empire' (p. 8 ± an antitheticposition from that of Riegl), Strzygowskiargued for multiple centres of artisticproduction and influence and for theweakness of the Graeco-Roman tra-dition falling prey to the East. Evokinga famous image in Winckelmann,65

Strzygowski was to present Hellas as abeautiful maiden who sold herself to an`Old Semite' to be kept as the jewel of hisharem, surrounded by the `Semitic pack'teaming with silk and gold and gems.Riegl's attempt (in Stilfragen) to see thecontinuity of Byzantium and Islam withGreece was a fundamental miscon-struction of the `tenacious racial art ofthe Orient', whose move from Meso-potamia to Constantinople implied thewresting of the New Rome from thearms of the Greeks into Orientaldecadence. The tenacity of this Orien-tal race is exemplified by the figure ofthe Wandering Jew.66 It is not difficultto see where all this was leading.

Strzygowski's influence among those who specifically claimed to be Romanists(or who sought to uphold the tradition of Wickhoff and Riegl) was relativelysmall. Otto Brendel, in his own highly slanted narrative of the historiography ofRoman art, dismisses the `Orient oder Rom' controversy as having

little immediate influence . . . It failed to open new avenues where they weremost needed, with regard to the monuments of Italy and especially Romeherself. The strict denial of a Roman art after Wickhoff and Riegl rancounter to common experience . . . The search for the proper characteristicsof Roman art was felt to be the pressing task after 1901.67

But this is a highly partisan commentary, seriously underestimating the impact ofStrzygowski's work on scholars of early Christian art and of Jewish art. So, by

33 Mural painting of a male figure, from thewest wall of the Synagogue of Dura Europos, c.AD 240. Syria. Photo: courtesy of YaleUniversity Art Gallery, Dura Europos Collection

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contrast, Charles Rufus Morey in 1942 wrote that Strzygowski's contribution`opening up perspectives of East Christian art unsuspected by the earlier Roma-centric view, exerted a powerful influence on the literature in this field of thepresent century'.68 Strzygowski's sway within the field was significantly enhancedby the single most important art-historical discovery of the 1920s and 1930s in theRoman East: namely, the Synagogue of Dura Europos in Syria.

Discovered in the excavation campaign of 1932,69 the Dura Synagogue (plates33 and 34) appeared like an empirical measurement in the hard sciences whichwould prove an hitherto speculative hypothesis. Where actual astronomicalobservations could confirm Einstein's Theory of Relativity (for instance), so amajor monument of Jewish art from the East was seized upon by many as theproof of Jewish (and hence Oriental) influence in the genesis of Christian and late-antique art. In the historiography of early Christian art, the Dura Synagogue(more than all the other remains of Dura put together) ± whose date of discoveryis so extraordinarily close to the rise of the most traumatic of all periods in Jewishhistory ± is a remarkable case of the spectacular impact of a chance monumentalsurvival.70 Strzygowski's use of Palmyrene tomb frescoes from what is now knownas the tomb of the Three Brothers (plate 32) seemed brilliantly to have presagedthe stylistically related wall paintings of nearby Dura (plates 33 and 34).71 Onemight point, in comparing plates 32 and 33, to the similar frontal flattening offigures against the background, the reluctance to use naturalistic techniques ofvisual illusionism, the square framing of heads. Likewise, quite apart from thesimilar iconographic focus on women and children in plates 32 and 34, there is aparallel ± almost faux-naõÈ f ± use of painted architectural features (the dados,

34 Mural painting showing Elijah reviving the Widow's Child, from the west wall of theSynagogue of Dura Europos, c. AD 240. Syria. Photo: courtesy of Yale University Art Gallery,Dura Europos Collection

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painted to resemble marble panelling but not so as to effect a trompe l'oeil, thecolumn in plate 32). The style of these kinds of images, dismissed as `mediocre' atbest and the work of `local artists of very moderate ability . . . dependentultimately on the hybridized traditions of the hellenized Orient on the westernedge of Parthia' with its frontality and static symmetry was grist to the mill ofStrzygowskian Orientalism.72 Mikhail Roztovtzeff (1938) specifically wrote of `areturn to the principles of Oriental art, a return to a simpler, more elementary and. . . a more barbaric form of art'.73 Charles Rufus Morey, writing of Dura justaround the time of Strzygowski's death, commented: `This frontier town is analmost perfect illustration of the process whereby Hellenism sank `intothe Orient's embrace'', to use Strzygowski's phrase.'74 The Biblical subject matter,no less than the style, led naturally towards that of Christian art.75 In the work ofKurt Weitzmann, for example, Dura held a dominant place as the key toexamining the rise of early Christian pictorial narrative.76

Empiricism, idealism and the problems of the big answers

For others, not least Andre Grabar and Ernst Kitzinger, the Oriental thesis ofStrzygowski led down the path of positing a `sub-antique' or `third-world' cultureof image production within the Roman empire and on its margins which could beemployed as part of the causal explanation for the transformation of forms in lateantiquity.77 Kitzinger in particular ± another exile from Vienna and one tornbetween the conflicting Rieglian and Strzygowskian strands in his own culturalheritage ± shows the continuing legacy of this intellectual schism as late as the1970s. His Byzantine Art in the Making, a series of lectures delivered inCambridge in 1974 and published in 1977, is an entirely stylistic attempt toexplore what he calls the `crises', `conflicts' and `syntheses' in the styles of late-antique image-making in terms which effectively attempt to bring together theRieglian and Strzygowskian apparatuses. Kitzinger wants his period (fromConstantine to Justinian) to be `a bridge between Antiquity and the Middle Ages'(pp. 2±3), not a `simple progression' but an `organic development' in which `theperiod as a whole does have an internal development of its own.' (p. 3) He evenentertains (as late as 1977) the Hegelian extension of Riegl's Kunstwollen byaccepting the notion of Zeitgeist for the interpretation of form in its culturalcontext (p. 17). But Kitzinger also accepts the significance of what he describes as`regional factors' (p. 4) ± the multiple regional schools and styles (Alexandrian,Asiatic and so forth) which he ascribes to Charles Rufus Morey, but which Moreyborrowed directly from Orient oder Rom (pp. 3±4).78 Kitzinger's chapter on`Ancient Art in Crisis' explicitly cites both Riegl (for the move towards opticaleffects, p. 15, n. 23) and his followers who advocated the late Antonine Stilwandel(Rodenwaldt p. 11, n. 13 and p. 18, n. 27: Wegner 14, nn.20±21). However, histext itself mentions Strzygowski more than once (p. 9, by name, and p. 11,through quotation). Kitzinger uses Strzygowski to formulate his own notion of the`sub-antique' (pp. 11±13) as a grouping of regional stylistic tendencies, foundedupon Strzygowsi's form of Orientalism. All this is conducted in an extraordinarilycareful discourse, full of caveats and ambivalent about every proposition even as it

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is put forward.79 Kitzinger uses the trick of naming scholars to avoid himself beingdirectly responsible for the positions which they represent but which he upholds.Thus at page 9, for instance, Kitzinger distances himself from `Decline' by usingBerenson as its advocate, but nonetheless he condemns the Arch of Constantine inBerensonian terms as the `collapse of the Classical Greek canon of forms', a`breakdown' of `jerky, overemphatic and uncoordinated' images (p. 7), with noalternative Rieglian Kunstwollen summoned to the rescue.

I myself feel as uncomfortable about Kitzinger's book as he clearly did aboutthe remarkably conflictive and creative tradition of Viennese-style art historywhich he was attempting to synthesize. Modern responses to Kitzinger amountlargely to silence, but the discomfort lies especially on the level of formalism. It isfounded on the conviction ± pretty well as universally held now as formalist arthistory was universally dominant half a century ago ± that stylistic analysis alonetells us precious little beyond the prejudices of its interpreters. Yet Kitzinger,working within the formalist tradition of which Riegl was perhaps the mostsignificant founder and Strzygowski one of the most brilliant exponents, revealsthat the two protagonists of this paper had more in common methodologicallythan their polemic and political differences might imply. The tremendous strengthof the Vienna School lies in its empiricism (to which Riegl and Strzygowski wereboth wedded), tied to a brilliant visual acuity in the stylistic description ofmaterial. Although such a method has often been accused of reductivism, this isnot true in either the case of Riegl or that of Strzygowski. Rather, in both cases,there was a rich stylistic generation of valuable art-historical data. The problemwith plentiful data is that it is never easy to weld it into an overarching theory(you might say that this was the credo of cautious British empiricism), but it is thewonderful ambition of Viennese art history (shared not only by Riegl andStrzygowski but also, especially, by Gombrich) precisely to combine the narrowfocus of empiricism with a grand thesis. The big answers, apparently inductionsfrom the evidence, turn out to be axiomatic assumptions about evolutionaryprogress and change in a multi-cultural empire (in Riegl), or the scientific andexperimental roots of artistic genius in anti-collectivist individualism (inGombrich) or proto-Nazi Aryanism (in Strzygowski). Interestingly, these are allquite specific political responses to contemporary themes entirely outside thespecific art-historical periods discussed by any of these scholars.

What is most strikingly shared by Riegl and Strzygowski ± especially bycontrast with Kitzinger ± is an empirical formalism embedded in profoundidealism. The minute stylistic evidence only matters in its relevance and supportfor a set of very grand philosophical, cultural and historical propositions in thegreat tradition of idealist Austrian and German humanism. After the horror ofwhat this tradition could lead to in the 1930s and 1940s (and the permanent tainton the names of some of Germany's major non-Jewish art historians, includingStrzygowski, but also Sedlmayr and Rodenwaldt among those mentioned here),formalism's most committed adherents, like Kitzinger were left with a stylisticmethod but no idealist theory to which to tie it. This, I think, helps to explain theextraordinary caution of Byzantine Art in the Making, which could be describedas style art history without conviction. Gombrich, who was, of course, an unusual(Warburgian) Viennese in never being wedded to style, is in this sense the last of

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the great pre-war art historians. For his art history is empirically supported, all-inclusive and strains towards a universally valid philosophical thesis grounded inthe work of Viennese thinkers like Popper and Hayek (both explicitly credited inArt and Illusion),80 who happened, like him, to have been exiled to London.81 Butwhat is interesting in the eclipse of art-historical formalism in the quarter centurysince Byzantine Art in the Making is that once scholars lost their faith ingeneralizing from stylistic observations to major historical conclusions (a loss offaith based more on the negative example of Strzygowski and others than on thestill inspiring and genuinely educational paradigm of Riegl), then the stylisticmethod itself was doomed. Despite the empirical justifications for style in closelooking and careful description, what has always really mattered is the greatidealist desire for a set of big answers which such close looking has been imaginedto offer.

Jas ElsnerCorpus Christi College, Oxford

Notes

My thanks are due to Natalie Boymel Kampen and Margaret Olin for their comments on an earlier draft, toPaul Crosley for his enthusiasm, to Sorcha Carey and Viccy Coltman for commissioning the first sketch ofthis paper for the `Who's Who in Classical Art History' day at the Courtauld Institute in 2000, and toSalvatore Settis and Francesco de Angelis for inviting me to give a later version at the Scuola NormaleSuperiore in Pisa. I am grateful, too, to Dana Arnold and the anonymous referee for their critique.

1 So at least argues R. Bianchi Bandinelli,`Spaetantike' Enciclopedia dell' Arte Antica, vol.7, Rome, 1966, pp. 426±7.

2 Strzygowski's book was written as an attack onF. Wickhoff's Wiener Genesis, Vienna, 1895. Hesubsequently attacked Riegl's SpaÈ troÈ mischeKunstindustrie in `Hellas und des OrientsUmarmung', Beilage zur MuÈ nchener AllgemeinenZeitung, 18 February 1902, p. 313 and in hisreview in BZ 11 (1902) pp. 263±6. Rieglresponded with `SpaÈ troÈ misch oder Orientalisch?'Beilage zur MuÈ nchener Allgemeinen Zeitung 93±4(23 April 1902) translated as `Late Roman orOriental?' in G. Schiff (ed.) German Essays onArt History, New York, 1988, pp. 173±90. Seealso J. Strzygowski, `Die Schicksale desHellenismus in der Bildenden Kunst', NeueJahrbuÈ cher fuÈ r das klassische Altertum,Geschichte und deutsche Literatur 8 (1905)pp. 19±33.

3 Late-antique art matters to Gombrich as beingarchetypally not that `incorporation in the imageof all the features that serve us in real life for thediscovery and testing of meaning' which belongto `the special tricks of naturalism' and `whichenabled the artist to do with fewer and fewerconventions' (The Image and the Eye, Oxford,1981, p. 297): see for instance Art and Illusion,London, 1960, pp. 124±5.

4 See Gombrich, 1960, op. cit. (note 3), p. 16 for

Kunstwollen as `a ghost in the machine' and(with the help of a quotation from MeyerShapiro) `vague and often fantastic'. CfMeditations on a Hobby Horse, Oxford, 1963,p. 114: `Now I do not want to give you theimpression that Riegl was a fool. He was not.But he too fell victim to . . . the fetishism of thesingle cause.' Gombrich is much more nuanced inThe Sense of Order, London, 1984, viii andpp. 180±97.

5 See J. Bakos, `The Vienna School's 168thGraduate: The Vienna School's Ideas Revised byE.H. Gombrich', in R. Woodfield (ed.),Gombrich on Art and Psychology, Manchester,1996, pp. 234±57, esp. 237.

6 See E. Gombrich, review of J. Badonyi,Entstehung und Bedeutung des Goldgrundes inder spaÈ tantiken Bildkomposition, KritischeBerichte zur Kunstgeschichtlichen Literatur 5(1932/3) pp. 65±75, with R. Woodfield,`Introduction' to Woodfield, 1996, op. cit. (note5), pp. 1±26, esp. 2±3. On the lifelong battle seeBakos, 1996, op. cit. (note 5), pp. 239±42, withGombrich's response (wonderfully impassioned inits denial of such a battle!) at pp. 258±61, esp.259±60.

7 For Bianchi Bandinelli's thoughts on Riegl, seehis entry in the Enciclopedia dell' Arte Antica,vol. 6, Rome, 1965, pp. 683±6. For acontextualized historical introduction, see D. G.

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Reynolds, `Alois Riegl and the Politics of ArtHistory: Intellectual Traditions and AustrianIdentity in Fin de SieÁ cle Vienna', PhDdissertation, University of California at SanDiego, 1997: Ann Arbor (UMI), 1997.

8 On Riegl's role in helping to create anautonomous discipline of art history, see W.SauerlaÈ nder, `Alois Reigl und die Entstehung derautonomen Kustgeschichte am Fin de SieÁ cle' inR. Bauer (et al), Fin de SieÁ cle, Frankfurt, 1977,pp. 125±39.

9 O. PaÈ cht, `Art Historians and Art Critics VI:Alois Riegl', Burlington Magazine vol. 105 (1963)p. 189 calls him the first to treat the minor artsas `a major theme of history'. Cf. Gombrich,1984, op. cit. (note 4), p. 182 who calls Stilfragen`the one great book ever written about thehistory of ornament'.

10 Especially Altorientalische Teppiche, Leipzig, 1891.11 See for example, R. Winkes, `Foreword' to A.

Riegl, Late Roman Art Industry, Rome, 1985,xi±xxiv, esp. xvi±xix.

12 M. Olin, Forms of Representation in AloisRiegl's Theory of Art, University Park, 1992,pp. 54±5.

13 ibid., pp. 71±2.14 On the Vienna School, see the useful

introduction and bibliography by C. Wood inC. Wood (ed.), The Vienna School Reader, NewYork, 2000, pp. 9±81.

15 PaÈ cht, 1963, op. cit. (note 9), pp. 190±1. See alsoOlin, 1992, op. cit. (note 12), pp. 148±53; M.Iversen, Alois Riegl: Art History and Theory,Cambridge, Mass, 1993, pp. 3±18, 149±66; M.A.Holly, Panofsky and the Foundations of ArtHistory, Ithaca, 1984, pp. 69±96; S. Alpers, `Styleis What You make It: The Visual Arts OnceAgain', in B. Lang (ed.), The Concept of Style,Philadelphia, 1979, pp. 95±117, esp. 98±105.

16 See N. B. Kampen, `Democracy and Debate: OttoBrendel's `̀ Prolegomena to a Book on RomanArt'' ', TAPA 127 (1997), pp. 381±8, esp. 381, n.1.

17 O. Brendel, Prolegomena to the Study of RomanArt, New Haven, 1979, p. 31.

18 E. Wind, The Eloquence of Symbols, Oxford,1993, p. 23.

19 See H. Zerner, `Alois Riegl: Art, Value andHistoricism', Daedalus 105 (1976), pp. 177±88,esp. 180±2 and C. Wood, `Introduction' to E.Panofsky, Perspective as Symbolic Form, NewYork, 1991, pp. 7±16. The two key texts here areE. Panofsky `Der begriffe des Kunstwollens',Zeitschrift fuÈ r AÈ sthetik und AllgemeineKunstwissenschaft 14 (1920), pp. 321±39(translated as `The Concept of Artistic Volition'Critical Inquity 8 [1981] pp. 17±34) and H.Sedlmayr, `Die Quintessenz der Lehren Riegls', inKunst und Wahrheit, Mittenwald, 1978, pp. 32±48 (originally published in 1929).

20 See Gombrich, 1960, op. cit. (note 3), pp. 14±25,with the comments of PaÈ cht, 1963, op. cit. (note9), p. 192.

21 See for example, N. Bryson, Vision and Painting,London, 1983, pp. 18±35.

22 A. Riegl, `Naturwerk und Kunstwerk I' inGesammelte AufsaÈ tze, Augsburg and Vienna,1929, pp. 51±64, p. 56.

23 On viewing, see M. Olin, `Forms of Respect:Alois Riegl's Concept of Attentiveness' ArtBulletin 71 (1989), pp. 285±99; Olin, 1992, op.cit. (note 12), pp. 155±69; Iversen, 1993, op. cit.(note 15), pp. 124±47.

24 See Olin, 1992, op. cit. (note 12), xviii±xx,pp. 180±7.

25 ibid., p. 175.26 On Riegl and conservation, see S. Scarrocchia,

Alois Riegl: Teoria e Pravi della Conservazionedei Monumenti, Bologna, 1995.

27 See M. Olin, `Alois Riegl: The Late RomanEmpire in the Late Hapsburg Empire', AustrianStudies 5 (1994), pp. 107±120. This paper, insomewhat different form, appears also as M.Olin, `Art History and Ideology: Alois Riegl andJosef Strzygowski' in P. S. Gold and B.C. Bax(eds.), Cultural Visions: Essays in the History ofCulture, Amsterdam, 2000, pp. 151±70. See alsoReynolds, 1997, op. cit. (note 7), pp. 252±60.

28 For a hagiographic version of his life and work,see M. Dvora k, `Alois Riegl' in GesammelteAufsaÈ tze zur Kunstgeschichte, eds J. Wilde andK. Swoboda, Munich, 1929, 279±99.

29 So the kinds of anti-Hegelianism, commitment toabstraction (non-mimetic elements) and evenproto-structuralism identified by M. Iversen,`Style as Structure: Alois Riegl's Historiography'Art History vol. 2 (1979), pp. 62±72, esp. 62±7.On Riegl and Walter Benjamin, see Iversen, 1993,op. cit. (note 15), pp. 14±16.

30 On Strzygowksi, see E. Frodl-Kraft, `Eine Aporieund der Versuch ihrer Deutung: JosefStrzygowski und Julius v. Schlosser', WienerJahrbuch fuÈ r Kunstgeschichte 42 (1989), pp. 7±52and S. Marchand, `The Rhetoric of Artifacts andthe Decline of Classical Humanism: The Case ofJosef Strzygowski' History and Theory: ThemeIssue 33 (1994), pp. 106±30.

31 Marchand, ibid, p. 116.32 ibid., p. 120.33 Witness for example his very minor role in his

colleague Julius von Schlosser's Die WienerSchule de Kunstgeschichte, Innsbruck, 1934,where Strzygowski figures only briefly in theaccount of Max Dvorak, pp. 114±15.

34 Cf Marchand, 1994, op. cit. (note 30), p. 121.35 On the racism of Strzygowski's East as effectively

a dislocated Aryan West, see A. Wharton,Refiguring the Post Classical City, Cambridge,1996, pp. 10±11.

36 See especially M. Olin, ` `̀ Early ChristianSynagogues'' and `̀ Jewish Art Historians'': TheDiscovery of the Synagogue of Dura-Europos'Marburger Jahrbuch fuÈ r Kunstwissenschaft 27(2000), pp. 7±28, esp. 20±1.

37 On Strzygowski and World Art, see U.

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Kultermann, The History of Art History, NewYork, 1993, p. 166; on World Art in its modernincarnation, see e.g. I. Lavin (ed.), World Art:Themes of Unity in Diversity: Acts of theXXVIth International Congress of the History ofArt, University Park, Pa, 1989; R. Nelson, `TheMap of Art History' Art Bulletin 79 (1997)pp. 28±40.

38 Particularly well discussed by Marchand, 1994,op. cit. (note 30).

39 For some general comments and bibliography onSpaÈ troÈ mische Kunstindustrie, see S. Scarrocchia,Studi su Alois Riegl, Bologna, 1986, pp. 75±8.

40 Olin, 1992, op. cit. (note 12), p. 129.41 F. Wickhoff, Roman Art, London, 1900, p. 7

went for the fifth century.42 The preamble to the Vienna Genesis book was

translated into English by Mrs Strong as RomanArt, London, 1900.

43 Wickhoff, 1900, for example pp. 17±8, 55±7, 76±9. In this he anticipated Clive Bell and RogerFry. On Wickhoff's defence of modernist artpractice (in the form of Klimt), see M.A. Holly`Spirits and Ghosts in the Historiography of Art'in M. Cheetham, M. Holly and K. Moxey (eds),The Subject of Art History, Cambridge, 1998,pp. 52±71.

44 See Brendel, 1979, op. cit. (note 17), pp. 25±37for an excellent analysis of the relations betweenSpaÈ troÈ mische Kunstindustrie and Wiener Genesis,and the way Riegl developed and expandedWickhoff's insights.

45 On Riegl's `Austrian formalism' and its particularexpression in SpaÈ troÈ mische Kunstindustrie, seeW. Kemp, `Introduction' to Alois Riegl, TheGroup Portraiture of Holland, Los Angeles, 1999,pp. 1±57, esp. 6±9.

46 On Riegl and style, see I. Frank, `Alois Riegl(1858±1905) et l'analyse du style des artsplastiques' Litte rature 105 (1997) pp. 66±77.

47 See the discussions in G. Kaschnitz-Weinberg,`Alois Riegl: SpaÈ troÈ mische Kunstindustrie'Gnomon 5 (1929) pp. 195±213; Brendel, 1979, op.cit. (note 17), pp. 29±37; Olin, 1992, op. cit.(note 12), pp. 129±53; Iversen, 1993, op. cit. (note15), pp. 70±91.

48 Olin, 1994, op. cit. (note 27), 112±13.49 Riegl, 1985, op. cit (note 11), pp. 52±7, 67, 76±8,

90, 91, 92, 93, 94±5, 99, 101, 103.50 See F. Haskell, History and Its Images, New

Haven, 1993, pp. 118±23.51 Olin, 1992, op. cit. (note 12), p. 130, with

references.52 For Foucault's discussion of Velazquez's Las

Meninas, see M. Foucault, The Order of Things:An Archaeology of the Human Scinces, London,1970, pp. 3±16; for Lacan's use of Holbein's TheAmbassadors, see J. Lacan, The FourFundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis,London, 1977, pp. 85±9.

53 Wood, 2000, op. cit. (note 14), p. 10.54 On this, in general, see my `Frontality in the

Column of Marcus Aurelius' in J. Scheid and V.Huet (eds), Autour de la colonne Aure lienne,Tournhout, 2000, pp. 251±64.

55 For example, M. Wegner, Die kunsgeschichtlicheStellung der MarkussaÈ ule, Jarhbuch desdeutschen ArchaÈ ologischen Instituts 46 (1931)pp. 61±174 ; G. Rodenwaldt, UÈ ber der Stilwandelin der Antoninischen Kunst, Abhandlungen derPreussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, no. 3,Berlin, 1935; M. Pallottino, `L'orientamentostilistico della cultura Aureliana' Le Arti 1 (1938),pp. 32±6; G. Rodenwaldt, `Zur Begrenzung undGliederung der SpaÈ tantike', Jarhbuch desdeutschen ArchaÈ ologischen Instituts 59/60 (1944/45) pp. 81±7.

56 R. Bianchi Bandinelli, Rome: The Centre ofPower, London, 1970, p. 314.

57 K. Lehmann-Hartleben, Die TrajansaÈ ule: einroÈ misches Kunstwerk zu Beginn der SpaÈ tantike,Berlin and Leipzig, 1926, esp. pp. 152±4.

58 G. Rodenwaldt, `RoÈ mische Reliefs; Vorstufen zurSpaÈ tantike', Jahrbuch des deutschenArchaÈ ologischen Instituts 55 (1940) pp. 12±43,esp. 12±22.

59 C.R. Morey, Early Christian Art, Princeton,1942, pp. 50±1.

60 It might be said, by the way, that Berenson'sreasons for espousing decline lay not simply insolidarity with the Renaissance tradition, but alsoin the particular historical moment when he satdown to write, namely 1941. See J. Elsner,`Berenson's Decline, or his Arch of ConstantineReconsidered'. Apollo vol. 148, no. 437, July1998, pp. 20±2.

61 R. Bianchi Bandinelli, Rome: The Centre ofPower, London, 1970, pp. 321±2.

62 It remains a real concern of Brendel's throughouthis Prolegomena. See esp. Brendel, 1979. op. cit.(note 17), pp. 3±11 (his introduction) on the`Roman problem'. Even in modern Classicalarchaeology, the problem lingers see T. HoÈ lscher,RoÈ mische Bildsprache als semantisches System,Heidelberg, 1987, pp. 11±13; S. Settis, `Un' arteplurale. L'impero romanao, i Greci e i posteri' inE. Gabba and A. Schiavone (eds.), Storia diRoma IV: Caracteri e morfologie, Turin, 1989,pp. 827±78.

63 See Brendel, 1979, op. cit. (note 17), 47±68.64 On Strzygowski's position, see ibid., pp. 38±47

and Wharton, 1996, op. cit. (note 35), pp. 3±12.65 From the very end of Winckelmann's The

History of the Art of Antiquity, see A. Potts,Flesh and the Ideal: Winckelmann and theOrigins of Art History, New Haven, 1994,pp. 48±50.

66 For this, see Olin, 1994, op. cit. (note 27),pp. 114±5, with references.

67 See Brendel, 1979, op. cit. (note 17), p. 4768 Morey, 1942, op. cit. (note 59), p. 203, n. 69.69 See C.H. Kraeling, The Synagogue (Dura

Europos Final Report VIII.2), New Haven, 1956,pp. 4±6.

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70 For an excellent discussion see Olin, 2000, op.cit. (note 36).

71 On the tomb of the Three Brothers, see J.Strzygowski, Orient Oder Rom, Leipzig, 1901,pp. 11±32; M. Colledge, The Art of Palmyra,London, 1976, pp. 84±7. On the Palmyra-Duraparallels in stylistic matters, see for example ibidp. 87 and A. Perkins, The Art of Dura-EuroposOxford, 1973, pp. 124±5.

72 For mediocrity, see M. I. Rostovtzeff, Dura-Europos and Its Art, Oxford, 1938, pp. 78 and85: `archaic clumsy, static, naõÈ ve and primitive'.For a more detailed stylistic account broadly inline with this judgement, see Perkins, 1973, op.cit. (note 71), pp. 114±17. For incompetentartists, see E. Gombrich, The Story of Art, NewYork, 1972, p. 89 and R. Brilliant, `Painting atDura-Europos and Roman Art' in J. Gutmann(ed.), The Dura Synagogue, Missoula, Mo., 1973,pp. 23±30, esp. p. 28 (whence the quote).

73 Rostovtzeff, 1938, 86. My quotation excludes hisapology for this description `if one likes to applyto it what is to my mind an inadequate term'(namely `barbaric'). However this does notprevent Rostovtzeff specifically choosing to applythe term!

74 Morey, 1942, op. cit. (note 59), p. 28.75 See esp. K. Weitzmann and H. Kessler, The

Frescoes of the Dura Synagogue and ChristianArt, Washington DC, 1990 and A. Grabar's three`recherches sur les sources juives de l'artpale ochre tien' (from the 1960s) reprinted in l'artde la fin de l'antiquite et du moyen age, vol. 2,Paris, 1968, pp. 741±94.

76 See Weitzmann and Kessler, ibid. pp. 3±4 for theplace of Dura in Weitzmann's work in the 1930s,1940s and 1950s. Weitzmann's characteristicmethod of tracing sources of existing work in allmedia to lost manuscript prototypes is itselfindebted to Strzygowski, who (for example)posited the origins of Trajan's Column in a bookscroll (1901, op. cit. [note 71], p. 4). It is worthnoting that all the great advocates in the battle

over late-antique art cut their teeth in manuscriptstudies. Both Riegl and Strzygowski sparredinitially in their work on the Codex-Calendar of354, with the latter going on to publishnumerous late-antique manuscripts, whileWickhoff's whole theory of Roman art wasfounded on the explication of the ViennaGenesis.

77 Esp. A. Grabar, `Le tiers monde de l'Antiquite aÁl'e cole de l'art classique et son roà le dans laformation de l'art du Moyen Age', Revue de l'art18 (1972), pp. 9±26 [=study I in L'artpaleÂochetien et l'art byzantin, London, 1979]; E.Kitzinger, Early Medieval Art, London, 1940,pp. 8±9; E. Kitzinger, Byzantine Art in theMaking, London, 1977, pp. 9±15.

78 Apart from the general structure of Morey'saccount, his choice of frontispiece ± a Christiansarcophagus fragment from Asia Minor in Berlin± speaks volumes. This piece, which Moreydescribed as `a symbol of [his book's] scope andpurpose', had formed the main focus of chapter 2of Strzygowski's Orient oder Rom, pp. 48±61,and may be described as a visual talisman of theStrzygowskian tradition.

79 A similar point was made of Kitzinger's collectedessays (The Art of Byzantium and the MedievalWest, edited by E. Kleinbauer, BloomingtonIndiana, 1976) in a waspish but acute review byCyril Mango: `the complexity of Kitzinger'sargumentation is further aggravated by histendency to qualify nearly every generalstatement he makes', in `Artifacts in theAbstract', TLS 25 March, 1977, p. 381.

80 References to Popper: Art and Illusion, 1977 (5thedn), ix, pp. 17, 23±4; reference to Hayek: ibid.,24.

81 Is it too fanciful to see England ± in the fadingtwilight of empire ± as particularly attractive tothe Austro-Hungarian emigre tradition (Londonas Vienna on the Thames), by contrast withAmerica ± the new world superpower ± and itsattraction for the German refugees?

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