Max Jakob Friedländer, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death
TweetMax Jakob Friedländer
German curator and art historian
Date of Birth: 
Place of Birth: Berlin
About Max Jakob Friedländer
- Max Jakob Friedländer (5 July 1867 in Berlin – 11 October 1958 in Amsterdam) was a German museum curator and art historian.
- He was a specialist in Early Netherlandish painting and the Northern Renaissance, who volunteered at the Kupferstichkabinett Berlin in 1891 under Friedrich Lippmann.
- On Lippmann's recommendation, Wilhelm von Bode took him on as his assistant in 1896 for the paintings division.
- He was appointed deputy director under Bode in 1904 and became director himself from 1924 to 1932, working on his history From Van Eyck to Bruegel and the 14-volume (printed in 16, with supplements) survey Early Netherlandish Painting.
- In 1933 he was dismissed as a "non-Aryan" and in 1939 had to moved to Amsterdam as a result of being a Jew.
- He attained the rank and title of geheimrat (privy councillor) under the German Empire.He also donated several works to the collection and worked in the art trade as an advisor, to Hermann Göring among others.
- Friedländer's approach to art history was essentially that of 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.
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