Articles

Drei Episoden ohne Aby

Freedberg, David A.

In 1969 I was at the Warburg Institute for the first time. I was actually on a scholarship to Oxford, but I knew from the moment I decided to become an art historian that I had to go to the London institute that preserved the intellectual legacy of Aby Warburg, or so it was called.

So when I arrived at Oxford ostensibly to write a dissertation on Latin literature, I was in fact already wondering how I could train as an art historian; I had already decided that I wanted to research Ovid's afterlife in the Renaissance. Right at the start, Francis Haskell, who had only recently been appointed art historian to Oxford to succeed Edgar Wind, let me know that Oxford had nothing to offer someone with my interests. It would be better, he said, if I went to London and spoke to Ernst Gombrich. The mere thought of it terrified me, a 21-year-old boy with practically no knowledge of art history; however, the ancient historian Oswyn Murray, my tutor at Balliol College, suggested that it might be easier if I met beforehand with the young Michael Baxandall, who had recently joined the Warburg Institute from the Victoria and Albert Museum .

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Also Published In

Title
Zeitschrift für Ideengeschichte
DOI
https://doi.org/10.17104/1863-8937-2014-3-96

More About This Work

Academic Units
Art History and Archaeology
Published Here
August 24, 2022