The Mannerist “revolution”, Dvořák and Soviet Art History

Abstract

Max Dvořák is widely recognized as a key contributor to the tectonic change in the perception of Mannerism amongst art historians. Soviet scholars could not ignore this shift. In this paper, I trace the impact of Dvořák’s writings on Mannerism in Italian and Northern art on generations of Soviet scholars, who had been working on Renaissance/Baroque topics and methodological issues. One can distinguish three periods in the reception of Max Dvořák’s ideas in Soviet art history. The first clash of methodologies occurred in the 1930s when an abridged collection of Dvořák’s essays was translated into Russian. The beginning of the Cold War marked the second period (the 1940s – 1960s), with its enforcement of ideological boundaries and the use of specific vocabulary; and yet, this period was ambivalent – the first efforts at rehabilitation were followed by the new outbreaks of dogmatic austerity. Lastly, I christened the third period, which lasted from the 1970s until the 1990s a ‘Dvořák Revival’ for it flourished with the new positive evaluations of his works and concepts.