Hegel as Art Historian

Joos Van Cleve, The Death of the Virgin (1515)

Oil on wood panel, 65 x 125.5 cm

Wallraf-Richartz-Museum & Fondation

Despite the central importance of holism, historicism, and generally, World-Spirit in art, Hegel’s lectures never lose sight of the sensual and singular nature of artworks and the need to closely encounter them, for Hegel had a deep sense of the potentials and limitations of different arts and of the different personalities of individual artists.  “In a work of art we begin with what is immediately presented to us and only then ask what its meaning or content is” (Hegel, 1998:19).  Hegel’s knowledge of art, and especially painting, was both extensive and detailed. For example, he once correctly saw that a painting in the Boisserée was by the same painter as one owned by Ferdinand Wallraf on the basis of similar treatment of the figures.  The dying Virgin Mary “was attributed…to Jan van Scorel, but is actually by Joos van Cleve…Hegel was thus correct in his judgment that both paintings were by the same artist, but he attributed them to the wrong man.”[1]  Gombrich comments that this is “the basic skill of what we call art history: the ability to assign a date, place, and, if possible, a name on the evidence of style.”[2]

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[1]. Stephen Houlgate, “Hegel and the Art of Painting” in Hegel and s William Maker, ed. SUNY, 2000 p. 77, fn. #7 (Äesthetic 1820/21, 261; Werke, 15:53; A 2:826; Hegel: The Letters, 594; Kunst als Kulturgut, 286)

[2]. E. H. Gombrich Art History and the Social Sciences: The Romanes Lecture, 1973 Oxford, 1975 p. 7