Max Jakob Friedländer

Who was Max Jakob Friedländer?

Max Jakob Friedländer was a German curator and art historian. He was a specialist in Early Netherlandish painting and the Northern Renaissance, who volunteered at the Kupferstichkabinett or prints collection of the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin in 1891 under Friedrich Lippmann. On Lippmann's recommendation, Wilhelm von Bode took him on as his assistant in 1896 for the paintings division. He was appointed deputy director under Bode in 1904 and became director himself from 1924 to 1932, working on his From Van Eyck to Bruegel, Early Netherlandish Painting. He also donated several works to the collection and worked in the art trade as an advisor, to Hermann Göring among others. He moved to Amsterdam in 1939. He attained the rank and title of geheimrat under the German Empire.

Friedländer's approach to art history was essentially that of a connoisseur. He gave priority to a critical reading based on sensitivity rather than on grand artistic and or aesthetic theories. He described it as follows:

If the determination of the authorship of an individual work of art most certainly is not the ultimate and highest task of artistic erudition; even if it were no path to the goal: nevertheless, without a doubt, it is a school for the eye, since there is no formulation of a question which forces us to penetrate so deeply the essence of an individual work as that concerning the identity of the author. The individual work, rightly understood, teaches us what a comprehensive knowledge universal artistic activity is incapable of teaching us.