Tomb Sculpture : Its Changing Aspects from Ancient Egypt to Bernini
Published by Abrams, 1992, hardcover, illustrated, index, 320 pages, 24.8 cms x 29 cms x 2.9 cms, condition; as new.
Starting with Egypt and pursuing the theme of funerary art through its fascinating cultural expressions - Greek, Roman, Early Christian, Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, to the great monuments of the Baroque - Tomb Sculpture reveals the many faces that memorials have taken. Each of these looks in some way familiar to us, however exotic its origin, for each one carried in its day a meaning that has never been absent in our lives. Dr. Panofsky's exploration of tomb sculpture through the ages, from many religions, countries, and cultures, enriches our understanding of these monuments in countless ways. With wisely chosen analogies from poetry, philosophy, and even music, he broadens our view as he brings nearer to us the common range of our human experience. Abrams is proud to reissue this classic volume, which has long been unavailable. It includes a new foreword by Professor Martin Warnke of Hamburg, a well-known art historian and co-founder of the magazine Idea.
The author, Erwin Panofsky, was a German art historian, whose academic career was pursued almost entirely in the U.S. after the rise of the Nazi regime. In 1935, while teaching concurrently at New York University and Princeton University (something he continued to do his entire career), he was invited to join the faculty of the newly formed Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. From 1947 to 1948 Panofsky was the Charles Eliot Norton professor at Harvard University.
Panofsky's work remains highly influential in the modern academic study of iconography. Many of his works remain in print, including Studies in Iconology: Humanist Themes in the Art of the Renaissance (1939), and his eponymous 1943 study of Albrecht Dürer. His work has greatly influenced the theory of taste developed by French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, in books such as The Rules of Art or Distinction. In particular, Bourdieu first adapted his notion of habitus from Panofsky's Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism.
