Art historian in the context of "Eurocentrism"

Giorgio Vasari (30 July 1511 – 27 June 1574) was an Italian Renaissance painter, architect, art historian, and biographer known for his work Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, considered the ideological foundation of Western art-historical writing, and still much cited in modern biographies of the many Italian Renaissance artists he covers, including Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, although he is since regarded as including many factual errors, especially when covering artists from before he was born.

Vasari was a Mannerist painter highly regarded both as a painter and architect in his day but rather less so in later centuries. He was effectively what would later be called the minister of culture to the Medici court in Florence, and the Lives promoted, with enduring success, the idea of Florentine superiority in the visual arts.

This is a partial list of Egyptologists. An Egyptologist is any archaeologist, historian, linguist, or art historian who specializes in Egyptology, the scientific study of Ancient Egypt and its antiquities. Demotists are Egyptologists who specialize in the study of the Demotic language and field of Demotic Studies. Although a practitioner of the disciplined study of Ancient Egypt and Egyptian antiquities is an "Egyptologist", the field of Egyptology is not exclusive to such practitioners.

Carmen C. Bambach (born April 27, 1959) is a Chilean art historian and curator of Italian and Spanish drawings at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art who specializes in Italian Renaissance art. She is considered one of the world's leading specialists on Leonardo da Vinci, especially his drawings.

The study of Roman sculpture is complicated by its relation to Greek sculpture. Many examples of even the most famous Greek sculptures, such as the Apollo Belvedere and Barberini Faun, are known only from Roman Imperial or Hellenistic "copies". At one time, this imitation was taken by art historians as indicating a narrowness of the Roman artistic imagination, but, in the late 20th century, Roman art began to be reevaluated on its own terms: some impressions of the nature of Greek sculpture may in fact be based on Roman artistry.

The strengths of Roman sculpture are in portraiture, where they were less concerned with the ideal than the Greeks or Ancient Egyptians, and produced very characterful works, and in narrative relief scenes. Examples of Roman sculpture are abundantly preserved, in total contrast to Roman painting, which was very widely practiced but has almost all been lost. Latin and some Greek authors, particularly Pliny the Elder in Book 34 of his Natural History, describe statues, and a few of these descriptions match extant works. While a great deal of Roman sculpture, especially in stone, survives more or less intact, it is often damaged or fragmentary; life-size bronze statues are much more rare as most have been recycled for their metal.

Johann Joachim Winckelmann (US: /ˈvɪŋkəlmɑːn/ VINK-əl-mahn; German: [ˈjoːhan ˈjoːaxɪm ˈvɪŋkl̩man]; 9 December 1717 – 8 June 1768) was a German art historian and archaeologist. He was a pioneering Hellenist who first articulated the differences between Greek, Greco-Roman and Roman art. "The prophet and founding hero of modern archaeology", Winckelmann was one of the founders of scientific archaeology and first applied the categories of style on a large, systematic basis to the history of art. Many consider him the father of the discipline of art history. He was one of the first to separate Greek Art into periods, and time classifications.

He had a decisive influence on the rise of the Neoclassical movement during the late 18th century. His writings influenced not only a new science of archaeology and art history but Western painting, sculpture, literature and even philosophy. Winckelmann's History of Ancient Art (1764) was one of the first books written in German to become a classic of European literature. His subsequent influence on Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Johann Gottfried Herder, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Hölderlin, Heinrich Heine, Friedrich Nietzsche, Stefan George and Oswald Spengler has been provocatively called "the Tyranny of Greece over Germany".

Jules Michelet (French: [ʒyl miʃlɛ]; 21 August 1798 – 9 February 1874) was a French historian and writer, best known for his multi-volume work Histoire de France (History of France), which chronicles the history of France from its earliest origins to the French Revolution. Michelet was influenced by Giambattista Vico, particularly by his emphasis on the role of ordinary people and their customs in shaping historical narratives, which contrasted with the traditional focus on political and military elites. Michelet also drew inspiration from Vico's concept of the corsi e ricorsi—the cyclical nature of history—in which societies rise and fall in a recurring pattern.

In Histoire de France, Michelet coined the term ''Renaissance'' (French for "rebirth") to describe a cultural movement in Europe that marked a clear departure from the Middle Ages. Although the term was initially used by the Italian art historian Giorgio Vasari in 1550 to describe the revival of classical art beginning with Giotto, Michelet was the first historian to apply the French equivalent systematically to a broader historical era. His use of the term "Renaissance'' established the modern interpretation of this period as a time of renewed humanism, artistic flourishing, and intellectual transformation in "post-medieval" Europe.

John Ruskin (8 February 1819 – 20 January 1900) was an English polymath – a writer, lecturer, art historian, art critic, draughtsman and philanthropist of the Victorian era. He wrote on subjects as varied as art, architecture, political economy, education, museology, geology, botany, ornithology, literature, history, and myth.

Ruskin's writing styles and literary forms were equally varied. He wrote essays and treatises, poetry and lectures, travel guides and manuals, letters and even a fairy tale. He also made detailed sketches and paintings of rocks, plants, birds, landscapes, architectural structures and ornamentation. The elaborate style that characterised his earliest writing on art gave way in time to plainer language designed to communicate his ideas more effectively. In all of his writing, he emphasised the connections between nature, art and society.

Max Jakob Friedländer (5 July 1867 in Berlin – 11 October 1958 in Amsterdam) was a German-Jewish 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 of the Kaiser Friedrich Museum (then containing the Berlin State Museums' old master paintings and sculpture) 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 move to Amsterdam because he was Jewish. 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.

He invented the style term Antwerp Mannerism, and created many of the notnames for undocumented artists in this style, and others of the period.