A Medieval Way to Modernity: Wilhelm R. Valentiner, Late Medieval Sculpture and German Expressionism

摘要

This article traces how Wilhelm Reinhold Valentiner (1880-1958) studied, approached and criticised late medieval Italian sculpture and German Expressionism, from the turn of the twentieth century until the eve of World War II. It explores Valentiner's theoretical positions through a thorough analysis of his writings and biography, from his time as curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (1908-1914), through his World War I years in Germany (1914-1923), and, finally, to his second period in the United States (1923-1935). For Valentiner, late medieval Italian sculpture and German Expressionism were linked by similar and comparable formal qualities. In his writings Valentiner created a bidirectional dialogue between past and present. He interpreted the stylistic characteristics of late medieval sculpture by referring to Expressionist formal simplifications; but he also elevated Expressionism as a pure modern form of art, by creating a "tradition" for it, and interpreting it as the final step of an artistic lineage that had begun in the late Middle Ages.