A connoisseur (French traditional, pre-1835, spelling of connaisseur, from Middle-French connoistre, then connaître meaning 'to be acquainted with' or 'to know somebody/something') is a person who has a great deal of knowledge about the fine arts; who is a keen appreciator of cuisines, fine wines, and other gourmet products; or who is an expert judge in matters of taste. In many areas, the term now has an air of pretension, and may be used in a partly ironic sense. In the art trade, however, expert connoisseurship remains a crucial skill for the identification and attribution to individual artists of works by the style and technique, where documentary evidence of provenance is lacking. The situation in the wine trade is similar, for example in assessing the potential for ageing in a young wine through wine tasting.
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In this Dossier
Connoisseurship in the context of Lost artworks
Lost artworks are original pieces of art that credible sources or material evidence indicate once existed but that cannot be accounted for in museums or private collections, as well as works known to have been destroyed deliberately or accidentally or neglected through ignorance and lack of connoisseurship.
Connoisseurship in the context of Adolf Michaelis
Adolf Michaelis (22 June 1835 – 12 August 1910) was a German classical scholar, a professor of art history at the University of Strasbourg from 1872, who helped establish the connoisseurship of Ancient Greek sculpture and Roman sculpture on their modern footing. Just at the cusp of the introduction of photography as a tool of art history, Michaelis pioneered supplementing his descriptions with sketches.