Edgar Wind was born to an Argentinian-Jewish father and a Romanian mother in Charlottenburg, Berlin in 1900; after studying art history and philosophy in Berlin, Freiburg, and Vienna, he continued his studies in Hamburg, where he came into contact with art historians Aby Warburg and Erwin Panofsky. Wind was subsequently instrumental in relocating the Warburg Library (focussed on Renaissance studies and the history of the classical tradition) to London in light of rising anti-Semitism in Germany (becoming its Deputy Director in 1934); he also wrote extensively on Renaissance iconography and iconology and was the first professor of History of Art at the University of Oxford, as well as co-founder of the Journal of the Warburg Institute with fellow émigré, Rudolf Wittkower, and presenter of the BBC's Reith lectures in 1960.
Art historian Edgar Wind was born to an Argentinian-Jewish father and a Romanian mother in Charlottenburg, Berlin in 1900. He grew up in a multilingual, educated household and attended the Kaiser-Friedrich-Schule in Charlottenburg from 1906–18. In 1918, he enrolled at the University of Berlin, studying History of Art, Philosophy, and Classics under art historian Adolph Goldschmidt (1863–1944). After attending lectures in Freiburg and Vienna by scholars, including Martin Heidegger and Edmund Husserl, he moved to Hamburg University, as one of the first students of art historian Erwin Panofsky (1892–1968) and was influenced by philosopher, Ernst Cassirer. Wind’s doctoral thesis dealt with Kantian notions of aesthetic judgments in relation to the discipline of art history. Following Germany’s economic depression after the First World War, he moved to the USA in 1924, where he taught mathematics and French in various New York high schools, before becoming a lecturer in philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In 1927 he returned to Germany, where he met German-Jewish art historian Aby Warburg (1866–1929), becoming his research assistant at the Bibliothek Warburg in Hamburg. After writing a second postdoctoral thesis on experiment and metaphysics, he was made a professor at Hamburg University in 1930. Wind's concept of the embodiment of metaphysical ideas as images (Verkörperung) continued to influence his research. Following Hitler’s accession to the Chancellorship in 1933 and the introduction of anti-semitic legislation, Wind was dismissed. Aware that the Bibliothek Warburg was also in danger, he used his connections to relatives and to committee members of the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, together with the financial support of benefactor and art collector, Samuel Courtauld, to help relocate the Bibliothek Warburg to London in 1933.
In 1934, Wind was made Deputy Director of the Warburg Institute and in 1937 he co-founded the Journal of the Warburg Institute with fellow émigré, Rudolf Wittkower (1901–1971), in which he published his first studies of Renaissance iconology and iconography; he also began lecturing at the University of London. After the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, Wind took a sabbatical, teaching at St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland, USA and throughout the war lectured at American Ivy League universities, including Harvard, Princeton and Yale, and at museums including the Museum of Modern Art and the Frick Collection in New York City. He became a temporary lecturer at the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University and accepted a position at the University of Chicago in 1942. In 1940, he published The Subject of Botticelli's 'Derelitta' in the Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, condemning an earlier anachronistic reading of the work. In the same year Margaret Kellner became his research assistant and they married in May 1942. In 1944, Wind left Chicago for a temporary job as Neilson Research Professor at Smith College in Massachusetts, becoming an American citizen in 1948. During his absence, the Warburg Institute was incorporated into the University of London and, following a disagreement with Saxl (now Director) about its vision and direction, Wind left in 1945. He remained at Smith, continuing his studies on Renaissance iconography, focusing on the work of Michelangelo and Bellini, speaking at conferences in Paris and Hamburg, and was instrumental in organising the Smith Art and Morals Symposium in 1953. In 1954 he gave a series of lectures at All Souls College, University of Oxford, on Art and Scholarship under the papacy of Julius II and the following year, was named Oxford’s first chair of History of Art, becoming a Professorial Fellow of Trinity College. He championed the creation of an art research library at Oxford and established History of Art as a department in its own right. He continued to teach at the university until 1967; his lectures – delivered without notes, accompanied by black-and-white slides – were so popular that they were often hosted by the Oxford Playhouse Theatre (then the largest auditorium in the city) in order to accommodate his audiences. During this period, he published his two best-known works: Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance (1958) and Art and Anarchy (1960), the latter forming the basis for his prestigious Reith Lectures for BBC radio, delivered in the same year, in which he discussed the emergence of great art during troubled times.
Wind retired as Chair of History of Art in 1967, having been instrumental in establishing History of Art as a university degree in England. Despite declining health from 1965 onwards, he continued to publish on Giorgione's La Tempesta and Michelangelo's theological sources. Edgar Wind died in London, England in 1971; his papers are held at the Bodleian Library, Oxford. Following his death, his widow, Margaret, spent more than 30 years funding research on her late husband’s life and work, as well as posthumously publishing many of his papers. In 2021, The Edgar Wind Journal was founded to promote interdisciplinary research on Wind's work and intellectual legacy.