Svetlana Alpers

Svetlana Alpers is among the most renowned art historians of the 20th century whose critical examination of 16th century Dutch painting revolutionized art historical discourse. She championed an approach to art history known as ‘the viewing of art in its context’, culminating in books like The Making of Rubens (1986) and Rembrandt’s Enterprise (1988). A professor of art history, Alpers has been described as a “polychrome titan” and her approach to art history as “historically and theoretically sophisticated” as well as theoretically relevant for a range of contemporary art forms, from landscape painting to films.

Alpers was born in Berkeley, California in 1935 to a family of Russian emigrants. Her mother was an art historian, and her father a microbiologist. Alpers received her undergraduate degree from UC Berkeley in 1955, before returning to Europe to study linguistics and medieval studies on a Fulbright grant. In Paris, she was inspired by the works of the Swiss art historian Heinrich Wolffleness and his close student Jean Starobinski.

Alpers went on to study the art and architecture of William, Prince of Orange during her graduate years in Berlin for her doctoral dissertation, and was awarded a PhD by the University of Munich in 1961. While working on her dissertation, Alpers was also lecturing on the history of art in Amsterdam and developing scholarship on Dutch painting, particularly the works of Pieter Bruegel the Elder.

Throughout Alpers’s career, she has published a wide range of essays, books and journal articles on the history of art. The Making of Rubens, written between 1969 and 1986, is considered by many to be her definitive scholarly work. The Making of Rubens looks closely at the context and meaning of the works of Peter Paul Rubens and the politics of Antwerp in the 16th century. Alpers also wrote Rembrandt’s Enterprise, which examines Rembrandt’s relationship with Amsterdam and its citizens.

Other works include The Art of Describing (1983), in which Alpers explores the viewing of art as both a work of description and as a form of contact between the viewer and the work itself. In it, she argues for a new way of understanding the history of art rooted in the particular contexts of a work.

Throughout her career, Alpers has also taught classes at a number of institutions, including UC Berkeley, Stanford University, Harvard University, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Columbia University and UCLA. Her lectures at Harvard and Berkeley in the 2000s become sources for her book What is Art History (2003). With this book, Alpers seeks to expand the discipline of art history by examining its methods of interpretation beyond its European heritage.

Remarkably, Alpers authored and edited a number of works up until the age of 86, when she retired in 2021. Her achievements are recognized at both universities where she teached with annual lectures, honors and awards. Alpers received the Lifetime Achievement Award in the History of Art from the College Art Association in 2002, as well as prestigious fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies and the American Philosophical Society. Widely recognized as a polychrome titan of art history, Alpers’s ongoing legacy can be seen in her books and in the impact they have had on modern art historical discourse.