Journal of Art Historiography (Dec 2017)
János (Johannes) Wilde and Max Dvořák, or Can we speak of a Budapest school of art history?
Abstract
Johannes Wilde, noted Michelangelo researcher and deputy director of the Courtauld Institute in London, earned fame, among other things, for being among the first to use the X-ray to examine art objects. This paper highlights Wilde’s close friendship with Max Dvorák, (who died in his arms in 1921) and his correspondence documenting his daily contacts with the Viennese school. Wilde is among the Hungarians, like Arnold Hauser and Charles de Tolnay, who won world fame. Beside revealing the daily life of a Hungarian art historian and his colleagues (Elek Petrovics, Simon Meller, Károly Tolnay, K. M. Swoboda, Strzygowsky, Schlosser) in wartime Vienna, his correspondence is a primary source to study the little-known support of Austrian aristocrats (Count Khuen-Belasi, Count Lanckoronski, Count Wilczek) for Hungarian artists. The periodical Enigma released a four-time selection of the 3,000 letters (some in the Hungarian National Gallery, some in London) with the Wilde siblings’ epistolary diary of the Budapest siege of 1944. The study is about these new sources, the Wilde-Dvorák friendship, Wilde’s contact with the Viennese School and the Sunday Circle, and raises the question again whether a Budapest school of art history can be outlined.
