Next year De Gruyter will publish a previously unknown thesis by the influential art historian Erwin Panofsky, titled “The Creative Principles of Michelangelo, particularly in relation to those of Raphael.” The document was discovered in the archives of Munich’s Central Institute for Art History last June.

According to Le Journal des Arts, the 334-page typed manuscript has handwritten comments thought to be Panofsky’s, meaning that he may have revised it for eventual publication. But Panofsky did not take it with him when he fled Nazi Germany for the U.S. in 1934. He died in 1978, but his second wife, Gerda Panofsky, an art historian in her own right, will edit the text and write a biography of her husband to accompany it.

One of De Gruyter’s founding companies published Panofsky’s dissertation in 1915, titled “Dürer’s Theory of Art, Primarily in Relation to the Italian Theory of Art.” The recently-discovered document is a habilitation thesis, needed for professional advancement in European universities. It was written during the 1920s, before Panofsky became chair of art history at the University of Hamburg in 1927.

— Kate Deimling

(Photo via Wikipedia.)

Tags: Art History, Books, De Gruyter, Erwin Panofsky, Kate Deimling, michelangelo, News