Early writing on the subjects of architectural history, since the works of
Vitruvius in the 1st century
B.C., treated architecture as a
patrimony that was passed on to the next generation of architects by their forefathers.
Giorgio Vasari in the 16th century shifted the narrative to biographies of the great artists in his "
Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects". Constructing schemes of the period styles of historic art and architecture was a major concern of 19th century scholars in the new and initially mostly German-speaking field of
art history. Important writers on the broad theory of style including
Carl Friedrich von Rumohr,
Gottfried Semper, and
Alois Riegl in his
Stilfragen of 1893, with
Heinrich Wölfflin and
Paul Frankl continued the debate into the 20th century.
Paul Jacobsthal and
Josef Strzygowski are among the art historians who followed Riegl in proposing grand schemes tracing the transmission of elements of styles across great ranges in time and space. This type of art history is also known as
formalism, or the study of forms or shapes in art. Wölfflin declared the goal of formalism as , "art history without names", where an architect's work has a place in history that is independent of its author. The subject of study no longer was the ideas that
Borromini borrowed from
Maderno who in turn learned from
Michelangelo, instead the questions now were about the continuity and changes observed when the architecture transitioned from
Renaissance to
Baroque. Semper, Wölfflin, and Frankl, and later Ackerman, had backgrounds in the history of architecture, and like many other terms for period styles, "Romanesque" and "Gothic" were initially coined to describe architectural styles, where major changes between styles can be clearer and more easy to define, not least because style in architecture is easier to replicate by following a set of rules than style in figurative art such as painting. Terms originated to describe architectural periods were often subsequently applied to other areas of the visual arts, and then more widely still to music, literature and the general culture. In architecture stylistic change often follows, and is made possible by, the discovery of new techniques or materials, from the Gothic
rib vault to modern metal and
reinforced concrete construction. A major area of debate in both art history and archaeology has been the extent to which stylistic change in other fields like painting or pottery is also a response to new technical possibilities, or has its own impetus to develop (the
kunstwollen of Riegl), or changes in response to social and economic factors affecting patronage and the conditions of the artist, as current thinking tends to emphasize, using less rigid versions of
Marxist art history. Although style was well-established as a central component of art historical analysis, seeing it as the over-riding factor in art history had fallen out of fashion by World War II, as other ways of looking at art were developing, and a reaction against the emphasis on style developing; for
Svetlana Alpers, "the normal invocation of style in art history is a depressing affair indeed". According to
James Elkins "In the later 20th century criticisms of style were aimed at further reducing the Hegelian elements of the concept while retaining it in a form that could be more easily controlled". == Practical issues ==