Between June and September of 1847, Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt (1818-1897) worked in Berlin as an assistant tom his former professor, Franz Kugler (1808-1858), in the second edition, revised and amplified, of Handbuch der Kunstgeschichte of 1848. This work was part of a broad historic-artistic study, started by Kugler in the 1830s.This study symbolized the birth of the modern universal art history in the German language. Related to Burckhardt, the participation in the History of Art Manual let elements of his future historiographical discovery appear: the Italian Renascence. We will try to get, therefore, in the infinite lines of the second edition of Kugler's manual, the traces of Burckhardt's words. In such traces, two components scintillate: on one side, the art as fundamental expression for the historical understanding; on the other, the passage that leads from Middle Age to Renascence and Italy's role in this transformation.
Burckhardt; Kugler; History of Art