Erwin Panofsky (March 30, 1892 – March 14, 1968) was a German art historian whose work helped establish modern iconography and iconology. His publications include Renaissance and Renascences in Western Art and Early Netherlandish Painting.
Panofsky's work emphasized the use of historical context to interpret artworks and visual culture. Several of his major studies remain in print, including Studies in Iconology: Humanist Themes in the Art of the Renaissance (1939), his 1943 study The Life and Art of Albrecht Dürer, and Meaning in the Visual Arts (1955). After the rise of the Nazi regime, he emigrated to the United States, where he pursued the remainder of his academic career.
Panofsky was born into a wealthy mining family on March 30, 1892, in Hanover, Germany. His parents, Arnold Panofsky and Caecilie (Solling) Panofsky, were from Upper Silesia. His Jewish family played a significant role in shaping his career as an art historian. He grew up in an environment that valued education, and was exposed to classical music and literature such as Dante's Divine Comedy, Shakespeare’s sonnets and the works of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Gotthold Ephraim Lessing. He did not observe Jewish religious customs as an adult, but remained proud of his heritage, sharing stories of his grandfather, a Talmud scholar.
He received his Abitur in 1910 at the Joachimsthal Gymnasium. These years were particularly important to him, as he believed the humanistic education he received there was fundamental to his scholarly achievements. He entered Berlin University as a law student. During his first semester, he attended a lecture by Wilhelm Vöge on Albrecht Dürer and discovered an interest in art history.
During his studies, he attended courses by the art historians Heinrich Wölfflin, Edmund Hildebrandt, Karl Voll, Carl Frey, Werner Weisbach and Adolph Goldschmidt. When he was 19, he entered a competition held by the Grimm Foundation and won an award. The subject had been set by Wölfflin and Goldschmidt, who judged the entries. Panofsky's essay was entitled Dürer's Theory of Art, Primarily as it Relates to Italian Theory. A part of this paper was submitted as his doctoral dissertation at the University of Freiburg. The dissertation was published in 1915 as Die theoretische Kunstlehre Albrecht Dürers (Dürer's Art Theory). After a riding accident, Panofsky was exempted from military service during World War I. In the spring of 1917, he was considered fit for duty on the home front and was assigned government positions in Kassel and then Berlin, where he was responsible for distributing coal to civilians. He was demobilized in January 1919.
In December 1918, while working in Berlin, Panofsky applied for habilitation at the University of Heidelberg, proposing to submit either his 1915 expanded Dürers Kunsttheorie vornehmlich in ihrem Verhältnis zur Kunsttheorie der Italiener or Der Westbau des Doms zu Minden. He withdrew the application in March 1919 for unexplained reasons. By August 1919, he shifted focus to the University of Tübingen but never finalized the thesis. Following Gustav Pauli's invitation in December 1919 to teach art history at the University of Hamburg, Panofsky agreed on the condition of simultaneously pursuing habilitation. By March 11, 1920, he formally submitted the completed first section of his study on Michelangelo’s stylistic development to the university’s Faculty of Philosophy, planning to complete the second part before the end of the year. Pauli, reviewing the thesis by March 20, privately advised Panofsky to secure housing in Hamburg, anticipating a favorable outcome. Despite Panofsky’s concerns over a three-month administrative silence, the evaluation process advanced: Pauli submitted his endorsement to the habilitation committee on May 10, 1920, and by June 3, committee members Max Lenz, Ernst Cassirer and Otto Lauffer had unanimously approved the application. The Faculty of Philosophy ratified the decision on June 19, scheduling Panofsky's Probevorlesung [de] (″trial lecture″) for July 3, 1920. Titled Die Entwicklung der Proportionslehre als Abbild der Stilentwicklung, the lecture successfully concluded his habilitation, granting him the venia legendi and securing his position at Hamburg. During this period, one of his early works was Idea: Ein Beitrag zur Begriffsgeschichte der älteren Kunstheorie (1924; translated into English as Idea: A Concept in Art Theory), based on the ideas of Ernst Cassirer.
However, shortly after his successful habilitation in July 1920, the manuscript vanished under unclear circumstances. Though on July 3, 1920, based on letter to Dora Panofsky, his wife at that time revealed plans to revise the text suggesting the work was still in his possession. Yet, by 1964, when Egon Verheyen inquired about the thesis after encountering its citation in an article by Gert van der Osten, Panofsky confirmed its loss, stating, “The original manuscript is lost”. It is assumed that the manuscript was lost after he moved his remaining belongings from Germany in 1943/44. Gerda Panofsky was unable to locate it, possibly because Ludwig Heinrich Heydenreich, who had studied under Panofsky, was in possession of the manuscript from 1946 to 1970, and brought it to Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte, where the manuscript was found in its basement. In the Süddeutsche Zeitung, Willibald Sauerländer shed some light on the question of whether Heydenreich shared his recovery of the manuscript or not: "Panofsky has historically distanced himself from his early writings on Michelangelo, as he tired of the subject, and," according to Sauerländer "developed a professional conflict with Austro-Hungarian art historian Johannes Wilde, who accused Panofsky of not crediting him with ideas that Panofsky got from their conversation about Michelangelo drawings. Perhaps Panofsky didn't care about the whereabouts of his lost work and Heydenreich was not malicious in keeping it a secret ... but questions still remain." Then, the original 1920 manuscript of Panofsky's Habilitationsschrift, his second dissertation, which is titled Die Gestaltungsprinzipien Michelangelos, besonders in ihrem Verhältnis zu denen Raffaels ("The Composition Principles of Michelangelo, particularly in their relation to those of Raphael"), was found in August 2012 by art historian Stephan Klingen. The manuscript is published as book on 2014 with Gerda as the editor.
Panofsky has already expressed interest in visiting America as early as 1929 on his correspondence with Fritz Saxl, and in 1930, he was invited by New York University (NYU) to serve as a Visiting Professor by recommendation from Goldschmidt . At that time, NYU's College of Fine Arts, which would later become the Institute of Fine Arts, was in the process of establishing America's first graduate department for art-historical research. By his participation, he helped Richard Offner and Walter William Spencer Cook to shape the department. Then, Panofsky was scheduled to teach during the Fall term of 1931-32, offering graduate-level courses along with a series of public lectures, all delivered in English.
During this first visit, Panofsky immersed himself in the scholarly environment of the East Coast, strengthening and expanding his American connections. He reconnected with Paul Sachs at Harvard delivering a lecture at the Fogg Museum. Panofsky had previously met Sachs in 1927 when Sachs visited Hamburg to inspect Aby Warburg’s Institute. He also visited Charles Rufus Morey, Alfred Barr, William J. Ivins and was introduced by Edward Warburg to a wealthy New York elite. Panofsky usually gave lectures at weekly salons hosted by Josephine Porter Boardman Crane which acquainted him with prominent figures such as the Rockefellers and the Straus family of Macy’s Department Store. This network will be beneficial when he later lost his position in Hamburg.
Following the success of his initial visit, Panofsky was considered for a return to the College of Fine Arts at NYU the following year. He managed to secure two additional twelve-week lecture courses for the spring of 1933 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Upon his return to America, Panofsky worked as an itinerant art historian, delivering lectures across the East Coast. With Adolf Hitler's appointment as Chancellor shortly after his arrival in New York, Panofsky expressed to Margaret Scolari Barr his relief at being in America, rather than witnessing the political crisis in Germany.