Page - 214 - in Wiener Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte, Volume LIX

Erica Tietze-conrat214 not want to be one; his interest in the design was stronger than the question who executed it. The design is the product of its time, the final work of art its casual utilization only. For my scholarly interest I, too, value a copy of a lost work of art –, its engraved repetition, its mere design – as much as it were the original. Wickhoff who had worked the critical catalogue of the Italian Albertina draw- ings in 18 […],29 who had the most intimate rela- tionship to Venetian Cinquecento painting made the mistake of publishing a copy in the Cabinet des Dessins in the Louvre as an original Titian. I too could have done so without being ashamed. Wickhoff’s evaluation as art historian has, of course, changed in these fifty years. I will not en- ter in details about his most famous work, the “Wiener Genesis”, but to have taken it as his sub- ject and dealt with it (reflecting the fresh trend of contemporary Impressionism), has not lost its importance. He drew the attention to an era which had not been focused on before him; that he saw in it the qualities which contemporary art had opened his eyes to see, gave his approach convincing vividness. If I scan through his many papers there are few “results” which have re- mained valid. The logical comment of the Dante verse on which the teacher-pupil relationship in Duccio and Giotto was based is a clear cut pat- tern how a literary source has to be interpreted.30 The Pervigilium Veneris recognized in the pro- gram for Botticelli’s Birth of Venus.31 His cataloguing the drawings of the Italian School in the Albertina was certainly a feat of courage; no other great collection had undertaken it in 18 […] and in the last years only […] years after Wickhoff’s experiment they followed him. Die “Wiener Schule”, which is “Wickhoff and Riegl” found its end at the time when my university years ended. I took my exams in the winter semester of 1905 and became the first examination candidate of Julius von Schlosser. While Wickhoff always followed the same rou- tine in his examinations, nobody had the faint- est idea what was to be expected of Schlosser. Wickhoff first had the candidate put in chron- ological order a bunch of photographs which Dvořák had selected for him. It was a very hu- man introduction, making it easy to calm down the usual examination nervousness. After this introduction only Wickhoff brought the ques- tion forward which was close to his heart since his own early study years: what do you know about Raphael’s youth? (I still know the answer I gave and which was the one Wickhoff expected me to give. How different from the one a stu- dent would be expected to give today!) In case of Wickhoff had some more stamina in reserve to continue the examination, he would select one of the photographs which the student had ordered chronologically and have it described. For me it was Titian’s Strozzi girl in Berlin. I had rightly recognized its chronological place, but otherwise did not know either its author or the sitter.32 Tit- ian was far away from my interests in the last year of my studies when I had prepared my doctor’s thesis: Unknown Works by R. Donner.33 Titian 29 Franz Wickhoffs „Katalog der italienischen Handzeichnungen der Albertina“ erschien in den Jahren 1891 und 1892 im „Jahrbuch der kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des allerhöchsten Kaiserhauses“. 30 F. Wickhoff, Über die Zeit des Guido von Siena, in: Mitteilungen des Instituts für österreichische Geschichtsfor- schung, X, Wien 1889, S. 244–286. 31 F. Wickhoff, Die Hochzeitsbilder Sandro Botticellis, in: M. Dvořák (Hrsg.), Die Schriften Franz Wickhoffs, 2. Bd., Berlin 1913, S. 415–432. 32 Das Bildnis der Clarice, Tochter des Robert Strozzi, befindet sich in der Berliner Gemäldegalerie und ist das einzige erhaltene Kinderbildnis Tizians. 33 „Beiträge zur Geschichte Georg Raphael Donners“, erschienen als: Unbekannte Werke von Georg Raphael Donner, in: Jahrbuch der Zentralkommission, N.F.3, II, Wien 1905, S. 195–268. Zur Bibliographie der Werke Erica Tietze- Conrats siehe u.a. Krapf-weiler, Die Frau in der Kunstwissenschaft (zit. Anm. 1).