La funzione del tipo per lo studio delle forme architettoniche in Heinrich Wölfflin ed Erwin Panofsky

This article proposes a comparison between some of the writings of Heinrich Wölfflin and Erwin Panofsky dedicated to the history of architecture. The aim is to point out the presence of contact points in their theoretical and methodological processes, elements of connection that are due to their belonging to the same cultural context. Starting from the definition of type, as it can be inferred from the theory of Quatremère de Quincy, I have analyzed this notion as it appears in the proposals of Wölfflin and Panofsky. I have investigated its specific meaning and the function of typology in the two scholars. In Wölfflin and in Panofsky the concept of type acts as a linking tool between historiography and theory. Its application in the study of artistic phenomena reveals how much their work is connected to the nineteenth-twentieth-century debate on the possibility of conceiving the art history as Kunstwissenschaft.