The Vienna School of Art History () was the development of fundamental art-historical methods at the University of Vienna. This school was not actually a dogmatically unified group, but rather an intellectual evolution extending over a number of generations, in which a series of outstanding scholars each built upon the achievements of their forerunners, while contributing their own unique perspectives. Essential elements of this evolution became fundamental for modern art history, even if the individual methods can today no longer claim absolute validity.
A characteristic trait of the Vienna School was the attempt to put art history on a "scientific" ("wissenschaftlich") basis by distancing art historical judgements from questions of aesthetic preference and taste, and by establishing rigorous concepts of analysis through which all works of art could be understood. Nearly all of the important representatives of the Vienna School combined academic careers as university teachers with curatorial activity in museums or with the preservation of monuments.
The concept of a Viennese "school" of art history was first employed by the Czech art critic and collector Vincenc Kramář in 1910; it attained general currency following articles published by Otto Benesch in 1920 and by Julius von Schlosser in 1934. In the following entry it has only been possible to make cursory mention of the most important representatives of the school.
History
Pragmatic art history
Rudolf Eitelberger is considered to have been the "forefather" of the Vienna School. He acquired a profound knowledge of art through private study during the Vormärz, and in 1852 was appointed as the first professor of art history at the University of Vienna. His greatest concern was to render the aesthetic appreciation of art more objective through giving weight to historical sources and demonstrable facts. He perceived art-historical research as an absolute prerequisite for the elevation of taste and for the improvement of contemporary art. On account of this goal-oriented attitude he became one of the most important protagonists in the historicist movement in Austrian art and architecture.
The first graduate of the Eitelberger's new program in art history was Moritz Thausing, who in 1879 became the second Ordinarius (full professor) of art history at Vienna. He advanced beyond his teacher's program in his advocacy of an autonomous art history and promoted the separation of art history from aesthetics.
Formalist art history
Thausing's students Franz Wickhoff (Professor 1891) and Alois Riegl (Professor 1897) furthered his approach, insofar as they developed the methods of comparative stylistic analysis and attempted to avoid all judgements of personal taste. Thus both contributed to the revaluation of the art of late antiquity, which before then had been despised as a period of decline. Riegl in particular, as an avowed disciple of positivism, focused on the purely formal qualities of the work of art, and rejected all arguments about content as metaphysical speculation.
Idealist art history
After the early deaths of Riegl and Wickhoff, one of the art-historical positions at the university was filled by Max Dvořák, who at first continued the tradition of his predecessors. However, Dvořák's interest gradually turned towards issues of content; that is, to precisely those issues that, for Riegl, were not the object of art history. Dvořák, in part influenced by the contemporary expressionist movement in German painting, developed a deep appreciation for the unclassical formal qualities of Mannerism. Dvořák's idealistic method, which would later be termed "Kunstgeschichte als Geistesgeschichte" ("art history as intellectual history"), found its most committed champions in Hans Tietze and Otto Benesch.