Rosenthal, Earl E., 1921-....

Earl Edgar Rosenthal (b. August 26, 1921, d. September 13, 2007) was an art history professor at the University of Chicago for over forty years, scholar of Spanish renaissance art and architecture, and War World II veteran. After receiving his B.A. from the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee in 1943, he served with the U.S. Naval Reserve from 1943 to 1946.

He pursued further studies in art history at New York University and completed a dissertation on the Cathedral of Granada in 1953 (published by Princeton, 1961). After brief work for the Milwaukee Art Institute and Layton Art Gallery, he was appointed assistant professor of art at the University of Chicago in 1954, where he developed his entire professorial career, becoming full professor in art history by the 1960s.

In 1963, Rosenthal received a Guggenheim grant, and a year later, he published a highly influential article in the Art Bulletin entitled "Michelangelo's Moses, dal di sotto in su" (December 1964). In his careful study of this work, already vastly examined, Rosenthal nonetheless observed that the extremes in proportion of the Moses statue only made sense in the context of its original purpose, to be placed high on Julius II's tomb. Thus, Rosenthal's postulation that the Moses only made sense when seen "looking up from below" demonstrates his astute examinations and original thinking.

Rosenthal was known for teaching courses on the diffusion of the renaissance arts throughout Europe and for highlighting Spain's important contributions to this period of art history. He published a monograph in 1985 entitled The Palace of Charles V in Granada. In 1995, Professor Rosenthal retired to Santa Barbara, where he died at the age of 86.

From the guide to the Rosenthal, Earl. Papers, 1942-1998, (Special Collections Research Center University of Chicago Library 1100 East 57th Street Chicago, Illinois 60637 U.S.A.)