H. W. Janson

Horst Waldemar Janson (October 4, 1913 – September 30, 1982), who published as H. W. Janson, was an American scholar of art history best known for his History of Art, which was first published in 1962 and has sold more than two million copies in fifteen languages. Janson was born in St. Petersburg in 1913 to Friedrich Janson (1875–1927) and Helene Porsch (Janson) (1879–1974). After the October Revolution, the family moved to Finland and then Hamburg, where Janson attended the Wilhelms Gymnasium (graduated 1932). He studied at the University of Munich and then at the art history program at the University of Hamburg, where he was a student of Erwin Panofsky. In 1935, at the suggestion of Panofsky, who had emigrated to the United States,...