Alois Riegl, Die Entstehung der Barockkunst in Rom, 1908

In 1908, Alois Riegl's unfinished text on the Italian Baroque was published by Max Dvorak and Arthur Burda; they edited part of his notes for three consecutive series of lectures at Vienna University. Riegl's book title aply reads Entstehung der Barockkunst in Rom: Akademische Vorlesungen and deals with the period from Michelangelo to the early Baroque - the period now called Mannerism. What fits our expectations is that the book deals with stylistic developments, which Riegl tackles through meticulous formalistic discussions. But the Entstehung der Barockkunst also represents a first step towards a critical assessment of contemporary sources - such as Vasari, Baglione, Passeri and Bellori - in the context of Baroque studies. This shows Riegl's versatility in approaches toward art history, combining them into a coherent and encompassing approach, and his broad historical education in art history, history and archaeology. With this, he opened up a critical approach to the contents of these publications for the Baroque period by analyzing their argumentative structure. He showed that these artists' biographies were a source also for other aspects related to art history, such as cultural context. Later art historians such as Hess and Schlosser would develop this approach for art history in the following decades.