Idéologie "nationale" ou science "positive"? : "Kunstgeschichte" et "Kunstwissenschaft", "Kennerschaft" et "connoisseurship" dans la Zeitschfrift für Bildende Kunst (1866-1874)

The scientific "science of art", which is typified by Giovanni Morelli, has been systematically valorized in opposition to the German Kunstgeschichte of the second half of the 19th century, considered a barren and flaw laden discipline, because It is nationalist and marked by ideology. An in-depth rereading of the major texts of the period demonstrates how wrong this presentation of the facts can be. The problems involve important questions of method. The historiographic analysis proposed here supports the view that historiography must critically look at the image that learning gives of itself, and especially of its own origin. These images are the representations, whose concerns must be recognized and studied. Also, two ideas overturn the Epinal imagery that we have evoked above. The history of German art, as nationalist as it was, could only have developed thanks to foreign contributions. As for Morelli's science of art, it maintains close relations with the history of Germanic art, which it, nevertheless, ceaselessly scorns, so as to better seem to set itself apart.