Hübner, [Rudolf] Julius [Benno]

Date born: January 27, 1806

Place born: Oels, Silesia, Germany

Date died: November 7, 1882

Place died: Loschwitz, Germany

Artist and Director of the Dresden Gemäldegalerie during the years preceding debate over the authenticity of the Holbein Meyer Madonna. Hübner studied at the Academy School in Berlin and under Wolgang Schadow and later in Düsseldorf. After a trip to Italy and settled in Düsseldorf. In 1839 he moved to Dresden where he was named a professor in the Academy of Arts in 1841. He obtained the great gold medal for painting at Brussels in 1851. In 1871 Hübner became director of the Gemäldegalerie (Paintings Gallery). For some time, controversy had been brewing over the authenticity of two near-identical paintings by Hans Holbein, known as the Meyer Madonna, of which the Dresden museum owned one. Hübner, true to his musuem, staunchly opposed the opinion of Franz Kugler and others that the Dresden version was not the autograph one, suggesting, along with art historian Herman Grimm, that both had been my the master based on stylistic grounds. The art scholar Joseph Archer Crowe, however, proved through technical analysis of painting that the Dresden version's binding medium of the pigment could not have been from Holbein's era. His son was Emil Hübner, a noted classical scholar.

Home Country: Germany

Sources: Kultermann, Udo. The History of Art History. New York: Abaris, 1993, pp. 146-147.

Bibliography: