Max J Friedlander

Max J. Friedländer , 1867-1958, German art historian. Educated in Munich, he became director of the Kaiser Friedrich Museum in Berlin. He left Germany in 1933 and settled in Holland. A specialist in Netherlandish painting of the 15th and 16th cent., he is best known for his monumental work on that subject, Die Altniederländische Malerei (14 vol., 1924-37). Friedländer was also the author of On Art and Connoisseurship (1942), Landscape, Portrait, Still-Life: Their Origin and Development (tr. 1949), and From Van Eyck to Bruegel (tr. 1956).

Friedländer, Max J. (b Berlin, 5 June 1867; d Amsterdam, 11 Oct. 1958). German art historian. The successor to Wilhelm von Bode as director of the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin, he enriched the collection particularly in his own field of Early Netherlandish painting. In 1934 he retired to the Netherlands. His magnum opus is Die altniederländische Malerei (14 vols., 1924–37). In a prefatory note to the English edition (Early Netherlandish Painting, 16 vols., 1967–76) Erwin Panofsky described it as ‘one of the few uncontested masterpieces produced by our discipline’. Friedländer covered the same ground in a much briefer format in Die frühen niederländischen Maler von Van Eyck bis Bruegel (1916), translated as From Van Eyck to Bruegel (1956). His other books include On Art and Connoisseurship (1942) and Landscape, Portrait, Still Life (1949).

Friedländer, Max J. (1867–1958). German art historian. The successor to Wilhelm von Bode as director of the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin, he enriched the collection particularly in his own field of Early Netherlandish painting. In 1934 he retired to Holland. His magnum opus is Die altniederländische Malerei (14 vols., 1924–37). In a prefatory note to the English edition (Early Netherlandish Painting, 16 vols., 1967–76) Erwin Panofsky described it as ‘one of the few uncontested masterpieces produced by our discipline’. Friedländer covered the same ground in a much briefer format in Die frühen niederländischen Maler von Van Eyck bis Bruegel (1916), translated as From Van Eyck to Bruegel (1956).