Jakob Burckhardt

Jakob Burckhardt (1818-1897), Swiss historian of art and culture, who to a great extent formed the modern concept of the European Renaissance. He was born in Basel and educated at the universities of Basel and Berlin. With the exception of three years (1855-1858), during which he taught at the Zurich Polytechnic Institute, he spent the following half century (1843-1893) as professor of the history of art and civilization at the University of Basel.

Burckhardt's first important work was The Age of Constantine the Great (1852; trans. 1949), a study of the Roman Empire in the 4th century ad, in which he analysed the decay of classical civilization and the triumph of Christianity. He followed it with The Cicerone: A Guide to the Works of Art in Italy (1855; trans. 1873), which became extremely popular. His most famous work, however, is The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (1860; trans. 1878), on which his reputation rests. In it, he traced the cultural patterns of transition from the medieval period to the awakening of the modern spirit and creativity of the Renaissance. He saw the transition as one from a society in which people were primarily members of a class or community to a society that idealized the self-conscious individual. This work remains one of the most important on the subject.