by Jon Lackman | 2 January 2009 | Uncategorized
From The Telegraph:
Sir Michael Levey, who died on Sunday aged 81, was a distinguished art historian who rose through the ranks of the National Gallery to become its director. Levey joined the National Gallery in 1951, aged 24, as an assistant keeper. His academic career had ended abruptly when he left and lost his unfinished BLitt thesis in a café in Oxford … Levey worked immediately alongside the eminent art historians Cecil Gould and Martin Davies, the latter of whom would be Levey’s immediate predecessor as director. He also worked closely with Anthony Blunt … Levey published numerous books, notably Painting in 18th Century Venice (1959) and Giambattista Tiepolo (1986), which has been regarded as one of the finest monographs on any individual artist. He was delighted when the Ateneo Veneto, the leading Venetian learned society, created a category of Foreign Fellows and he was among the first to be elected. He also surprised contemporaries when he published The World of Ottoman Art (1976), which succeeded in stimulating even experts despite its being well outside Levey’s main field of interest.
