Michael Baxandall: Influential art historian, dies at 74

Art historian Michael Baxandall died on August 12 at the age of 74. One of the most influential art historians of the latter half of the 20th century, Baxandall is largely credited with introducing ideas about language and rhetoric into and broadening the context for the study of works of art. He worked at the Warburg Institute for much of his life, beginning there in 1958 in the photographic collection. In 1961 he moved to the Victoria and Albert Museum as assistant keeper in the department of architecture and sculpture, but returned to the Warburg in 1965. His first two books, Giotto and the Orators (1971) and Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy (1972), established him as a major intellectual figure. Among his many distinctions are the Mitchell Prize for art history, which he received for his book The Limewood Sculptors of Renaissance Germany, and a MacArthur Foundation award. Baxandall suffered increasingly from Parkinson's disease in the later years of his life.