Libman Mikhail Yakovlevich (1920)

Libman (Liebmann) Mikhail (Michail) Yakovlevich (born 1920, Riga) — art historian.

In 1939 Mikhail Libman entered the Sculpture Faculty of the Latvian Academy of Arts. In June 1941 he volunteered for the front; in 1943 he was demobilized. That same year he entered the Sculpture Department of the Surikov Moscow Art Institute, and a year later became a student of the Department of Art History of the Philological Faculty of Moscow State University, graduating in 1949. His academic adviser was one of the most prominent Soviet art historians, B. Vipper.

While studying at the university, Libman began working at the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts in 1945, first as a research associate in the library, then as head of the Department of Reproductions; in 1956 he was appointed academic secretary. His first scholarly publications appeared in the 1950s. From 1960 he worked as a research associate in the Sector of Classical Western Art at the Institute of Art History of the USSR Ministry of Culture. He defended his Candidate’s dissertation in 1962 and his Doctoral dissertation in 1969 (on “German Painting and Graphic Art of the Dürer Era”). In 1980 he became the Institute’s deputy director for research, a position he held until 1991.

Libman was also a member of the State Expert Commission of the USSR Ministry of Culture and a member of the Bureau of the Academic Council on the History of World Culture of the USSR Academy of Sciences. He participated in numerous congresses and conferences in the USSR and abroad, representing Soviet art history at the 21st (Bonn, 1964), 22nd (Budapest, 1969), 23rd (Granada, 1973), and 25th (Vienna, 1983) International Congresses of the History of Art.

Libman’s main specialization is German and Italian Renaissance art, primarily sculpture. He authored numerous articles and several monographs, including Donatello (Moscow, 1962); Giuseppe Maria Crespi (Moscow, 1967; Dresden, 1976); Dürer and His Era (Moscow, 1972); German Sculpture 1350–1550 (Moscow, 1980; Leipzig, 1982), among others. His research also covers 20th-century art, especially modern German art (monographs Hans Grundig, Moscow, 1974; Werner Klemke, Leningrad, 1988, etc.). Issues of modern sculpture are explored in Giacomo Manzù (Moscow, 1966). Several of Libman’s articles are devoted to questions of art theory and methodology (e.g., “Iconology” in Modern Art Studies Abroad, Moscow, 1964; “Social Factors in Art and Their Role in Research Methodology: The Example of the Late Middle Ages and the Renaissance” in Soviet Art Studies ’78, vol. 2, Moscow, 1979).

In 1991 Mikhail Libman moved to Israel. In 1992 he taught seminars on German and Italian Renaissance art for doctoral students at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He collaborated with the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, which periodically invited him as a consultant; based on his research in the museum’s storage collections, he prepared two articles published in the Israel Museum Journal. He was a scholarly consultant and the author of more than 30 articles on art in the Short Jewish Encyclopedia. In 1997 his book Dmuto ha-hevratit shel ha-oman be-tkufat ha-Renessans (“The Social Image of the Artist in the Renaissance,” Jerusalem) was published in Israel.