Journal Article

Aloïs Riegl and the riddle of Rembrandt's Staalmeesters: Vienna schooling Dutch art scholarship

Binstock, Benjamin

2023

Overview

'Art history's culminating moment, the years when the project of art history most perfectly realized its possibilities' almost arrived in 1893 with Alois Riegl's first book Questions of Style, according to an appetizing formulation in Christopher Wood's critically-acclaimed recent study, The History of Art History. Despite its promise for the project of art history, the Vienna school is ultimately found wanting, like so many other names and movements in Wood's capacious review, nor is any progress evident in his broader history of art history up to the present. As a corollary perspective, this paper proposes to move beyond what Riegl got wrong in order to emphasize the pertinence of what he got right for advancing art history today, specifically in his group portrait study and above all in relation to the riddle of Rembrandt's Staalmeesters. By bringing Riegl's close readings of mostly 'minor' paintings to bear on monuments of world art by Rembrandt, Riegl between 'applied' and 'high' art, or authorless works and one of the world's foremost authors, who was profoundly concerned with his tradition. These concrete examples also demonstrate how Riegl's elucidations of visual particulars are not in contrast to but rather derive from and inform his theory of the broader development of group portraiture. Riegl sought to explain the Kunstvollen or 'will of art' of Dutch group portraits, what they seek to do as art.5 His approach is preferable to and directly applicable to current interpretations, I submit, and can thus serve as a corrective or a means of 'Vienna schooling' Dutch art scholarship. Conversely, situating Riegl's group portrait study, as his last major work and potentially the culmination of his thought, in relation to subsequent approaches can yield new insights into his place within the history of art history, a 'Vienna school' perspective applied to the Vienna school itself. From such a synthetic or cumulative art historiography and history of art history, looking backward in order to move forward, we can more perfectly realize the project of art history.

• Publisher: Journal of Art Historiography,Department of Art History, University of Birmingham
• Subject: 19th century / account book / aloïs riegl / Art criticism / Art history / cumulative art historiography / Dutch culture / Historiography / Portraits / portraiture / rembrandt / Rembrandt Van Rijn (1606-1669) / Riegl, Alois (1858-1905) / staalmeesters