Erwin Panofsky

Erwin Panofsky (30 March 1892 – 14 March 1968) was a German art historian, whose academic career was pursued mostly in the U.S. after the rise of the Nazi regime. 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. Erwin Panofsky was born in Hanover, Germany. He studied at...