Page - 7 - in Erica Tietze-Conrat - Tagebücher, Volume II: Mit den Mitteln der Disziplin (1937–1938)

7 David Rosand Foreword The diaries of Erica Tietze-Conrat invite us to join her and her husband Hans Tietze on their journey of exploration in 1937–1938, visiting art collections and collectors throughout Western Europe. The itinerary is exhausting. Criss-crossing the continent and Britain, she records their responses to an amazing variety of works of art. Their primary purpose was to gather material for their projected catalogue of The Drawings of the Venetian Painters of the Renaissance, which was published in 1944. As an art historian whose own studies were inspired by and dependent upon their work, I am especially pleased to accept the invitation of the diaries to accompany the Tietzes on their visits, to listen in on their discussions of attribution, their comments on other scholars and some of the more eccentric collectors, to follow Hans’s photographic campaign, the results of which were to form the illustrated core of The Drawings of the Venetian Painters in the 15th and 16th Centuries. Although they were looking at all the art they could see, their trip was the cul- mination of several years of preliminary research on the drawings of the Venetian painters. The project began with the discovery by Erica of the very rich collection of Venetian drawings in the Uffizi, drawings never properly studied or catalogued. Inspired by Bernard Berenson’s monumental catalogue of The Drawings of the Floren- tine Painters (first published in 1903), the Tietzes set out to do justice to the paint- ers of Venice. Even before their journey of exploration, they had already set forth an approach and methodology that would challenge inherited notions of Venetian drawing and practice. First promulgated in the sixteenth century, especially by the Tuscan Giorgio Vasari, these assumptions continued to inform the attitude of subse- quent generations of connoisseurs : it was held that painters in Venice rarely practiced drawing and that drawing played little role in the preparation of paintings in Venice. Correcting this misconception, the Tietzes returned the drawings of the Venetian painters to the studio, demonstrating the ways in which drawings functioned in that workshop context. The publication of The Drawings of the Venetian Painters established new foundations for the study of the many dimensions of art in Venice : studio prac- tice and the preparation of paintings, the technical aspects of painting on canvas, the structure and traditions of the family workshop. But Erica’s diaries offer more than a record of the research of two pioneering art historians ; their professional activities are recorded within very human contexts. Her keen eye responded not only to the art they saw but to the setting as well, especially the aristocratic houses of Great Britain and, indeed, their owners. Even as she was