Max Jakob Friedländer
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Max Jakob Friedländer (July 5, 1867, Berlin - October 11, 1958, Amsterdam) was a German art expert (Kunstwissenschafter) and art historian (Kunsthistoriker).
He did not think of himself as an art historian so much as a connoisseur. He gave priority to a critical reading based on sensitivity rather than on grand artistic and or aesthetic theories. He described it as follows: "If the determination of the authorship of an individual work of art most certainly is not the ultimate and highest task of artistic erudition. Even if it were no path to the goal: nevertheless, without a doubt, it is a school for the eye, since there is no formulation of a question which forces us to penetrate so deeply the essence of an individual work as that concerning the identity of the author. The individual work, rightly understood, teaches us what a comprehensive knowledge universal artistic activity is incapable of teaching us." Friedlaender 1944, p. 160.
Literary works
- Meisterwerke der niederländischen Malerei des 15. und 16. Jahrhundert, 1903 ("Masterpieces of Netherlandish painting of the 15th and 16th centuries")
- Von Jan van Eyck bis Bruegel, 1916 ("From Jan van Eyck to Bruegel")
- A. Dürer, 1923
- Die altniederländische Malerei, 1924-37 (translated into English as "Early Netherlandish painting")
- Echt und unecht, 1929 ("Real and unreal")
- Von Kunst und Kennerschaft, 1946 ("On art and connoisseurship")
- Essays über die Landschaftsmalerei, 1947 ("Essays on landscape painting")
- Early Netherlandish Painting, vol. VII, Leiden and Brussels, 1972
