Gurlitt, Cornelius

Date born: 1850

Place born: Nischwitz bei Wurzen, Germany

Date died: 1938

Place died: Dresden, Germany

Architect and seminal architectural historian for the Baroque. Gurlitt's father, Louis Gurlitt (1812-1879), was a landscape painter. The younger Gurlitt was initially apprenticed to a carpenter before studying architecture at the Berliner Bauakademie and between 1869-1872 at the Polytechnikum in Stuttgart were he studied esthetics, under Friedrich Theodor Vischer (1807-1887) and art history under Wilhelm Lübke (q.v.). He became a practicing architect in 1871. However he abandoned this to study art history, under Anton Springer (q.v.) 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 (q.v.). He toured Prague and Berlin studying additional examples of the period. Gurlitt joined the staff of the Dresden Kunstgewerbemuseum in 1879. Alwin Schulz (q.v.) commissioned Gurlitt to write the Baroque sections for the updating of Geschichte der bildenden Künste (History of the Pictorial Arts) left unfinished by Karl Schnaase (q.v.). In 1883 Gurlitt began publishing his survey of Baroque decorative arts in Germany, Das barock- und rococo-Ornament Deutschlands. 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. Even Lübke, his former teacher, cautioned him not to squander his time on Baroque folly. Beginning in 1886, Gurlitt began publishing his survey of Baroque art (Low Countries, France and England in 1886, Italy in 1887, and Germany in 1889) as part of the Geschichte der Baukunst series begun by Franz Kugler (q.v.), a series in the process of being revised as Geschichte der neuren Baukunst. As an editor of Stadtbaukunst alter und neuer Zeit he helped get Frühlicht, a radical architectural magazine by the architectural visionary Bruno Taut (1880-1938), published. Gurlitt wrote over 90 books and hundreds of articles on all aspects of architecture, art, urban planning and politics. His brother, Fritz Gurlitt (1854-1893), was a Berlin gallery dealer who represented Anselm Feuerbach (1829-1880), among others.

Gurlitt's work marks the beginning of a reevaluation of the Baroque and Rococo in art history. A full treatment of the period came with August Schmarsow (q.v.) in 1887, whose book Barock und Rokoko covered the entire spectrum of baroque art and not just architecture. Even after Gurlitt's publications on the Baroque, the twenty-four year old Heinrich Wölfflin (q.v.) in his study, Renaissance und Barock, 1888, had condemned the full Baroque style (Watkin). Alois Riegl (q.v.) began lecturing on the Baroque in 1894 and 1895, though he criticized Gurlitt's studies for avoiding historical background and for defining the term "Baroque" insufficiently. Gurlitt's ideas reject the classicism standard Karl Friedrich Schinkel (1781-1841) and other architects espoused. In his memoirs, Gurlitt wrote that he had always considered himself more an architect than an architectural historian, confiding in Jahn's biographical profile that he feared becoming an academic. Like most pioneers, his appreciation had limitations; he found Borromini lacking in "intrinsic value."

Home Country: Germany

Sources: "Cornelius Gurlitt." in Jahn, Johannes, ed. Die Kunstwissenschaft der Gegenwart in Selbstdarstellungen. 2 vols. Leipzig: F. Meiner, 1924, pp. 1-32; Bazin, Germain. Histoire de l'histoire de l'art: de Vasari à nos jours. Paris: Albin Michel, 1986, pp. 174, 284; Watkin, David. The Rise of Architectural History. London: Architectural Press, 1980, p. 11; Metzler Kunsthistoriker Lexikon: zweihundert Porträts deutschsprachiger Autoren aus vier Jahrhunderten. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1999, pp. 135-137; Kultermann, Udo. The History of Art History. New York: Abaris, 1993, pp. 136-137.

Bibliography: Das barock- und rococo-Ornament Deutschlands. 4 vols. Berlin: E. Wasmuth, 1883-1889; [the following three books are also part of the larger Geschichte der neuren Baukunst series:] Geschichte des Barockstiles, des Rococo, und des Klassicismus in Belgien, Holland, Frankreich, England. Stuttgart: Ebner & Seubert, 1886, (Geschichte der neuren Baukunst vol. 5, section 1); Geschichte des Barockstiles in Italien. Stuttgart: Ebner & Seubert, 1887, (Geschichte der neuren Baukunst vol 5, section 2, part 1); Geschichte des Barokstiles und des Rococo in Deutschland. Stuttgart: Ebner & Seubart, 1889, (Geschichte der neuren Baukunst vol. 5., section 2, part. 2); August der Starke, ein Furstenleben aus der zeit des deutschen Barock. Dresden: Im Sibyllem-Verlag, 1924.