Schorn, [Johann Karl] Ludwig

Date born:  1793

Place Born:  Castell (county), Germany

Date died:  1842

Place died:  Weimar, Germany

Early translator of and exponent of Vasari. The first half of the nineteenth century marked a growing interest in Italy as the birthplace of art.  Dominico Fiorillo (q.v.) and Karl Friedrich von Rumohr (q.v.) through their early art histories had established this link, and painters from Germany flocked there to study the work of Raphael and other Renaissance masters.  The Vite of Giorgio Vasari (q.v.) was central to an understanding of these artists.  Schorn made the first translation into German, writing an introductory preface as well.  After Schorn collaborated with painter and art historian Ernst Förster (q.v.) to establish the Vasari Ausgabe, with Schorn writing the introduction to the first volume. After Schorn's death, Förster continued the project. Schorn's lectures on art history at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München were the foundation of the establishment of the later Institut für Kunstgeschichte at the University.

Home Country:  Germany

Sources: Busch, Werner.[commentary before the excerpt on Schorn.]  Kunsttheorie und Kunstgeschichte des 19. Jahrhunderts in Deutschland 1: Texte und Dokument.  Stuttgart: Reclam, 1982, pp. 299-300;  Metzler Kunsthistoriker Lexikon: zweihundert Porträts deutschsprachiger Autoren aus vier Jahrhunderten. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1999, pp. 369-70.

Bibliography:  and Klenze, Leo, Ritter von. Beschreibung der Glyptothek Sr. Majestät des Königs Ludwig I. von Bayern.  Munich: J.G. Cotta, 1837