SOURCE: "Burckhardt, 1818-1897," in Visions of Culture: Voltaire, Guizot, Burckhardt, Lamprecht, Huizinga, Ortega y Gasset, University of Chicago Press, 1966, pp. 115-60.

In the excerpt below, Weintraub discusses Burckhardt's approach to art and art history.

Burckhardt's reluctance to theorize must not be confused with dislike for generalization or structuring principles, nor should he be compared with the hesitant factual historian who makes a meager virtue of accurate detail at the cost of any larger vision. Burckhardt had a pronounced love for details, but he criticized the busy piling-up of more and more unwanted facts.… As art historian he sought to rise above the "old cheese of the history of artists"… by giving the "pure history of styles and forms." His formal analysis of Italian Renaissance architecture, Die Geschichte der Renaissance in Italien, was pioneering work for a methodologically independent art history. Burckhardt the cultural historian selected large topics which...