On Wolfflin 's Formal Analysis Theory

Heinrich Wolfflin, an Art historian, was born in Zurich Switzerland. Under the influence of Professor Jacob Christoph Burckhardt (Basel University), he started carrying out research about Art History. But, different from Jacob, Wolfflin focused mainly on the theory about how to obtain visual specialty of certain art product rather than pure history.Writings of Wolfflin (Kunstegeschichtliche Grundbegriffe,1915) described the change of style from The Renaissance to Baroque, and categorize the changes into five pairs of concepts. Generally speaking, each pair of concept reveals different sides of a process. He insisted that it is useful and appropriate to utilize those concepts simply analyzing this special period. And those concepts are proved to have great value by exploiting the development of art. Wolfflin analyzed the style of painting in these two periods by both macro and micro analysis of style issue and through building those five pairs of concept. These five pairs of concepts are line drawing and plotting, plane and depth, sealing and opening, variety and simplicity, clarity and vagueness. These category had been widened to sculpture and architecture.There had been many scholars in China analyze those five pairs thoroughly. The introduction part of this thesis summarize the art theory of Wolfflin including his lifetime and cultural background. In the second chapter, those five pairs of concepts are studied and analyzed. In third and forth chapter, the historical meaning of his art theory, This article, based on the pioneer’s result, carried out a deep discussion about his art theory, historical meaning and value inherit by forming a relation between his research and books.