Heinrich Wölfflin’s Classic Patterns of the Renaissance

This essay examines Heinrich Wölfflin’s patterns of judgement in his pioneering art-historical study Classic Art , first published in 1899. By using the anti-historicist concept of the “classic”, he systematically withdraws the art of the High Renaissance from historical change in order to erect it as a protective shield against the transience of unclassic modernism and contemporary life. This proto-structuralist act of creating order by means of pattern comparisons in the timeless realm of beauty conceives the art historian as both an intellectual aristocrat with artistic ambitions and a conservator of the eternities of classic art.