Gisela Marie Augusta Richter (14 or 15 August 1882 – 24 December 1972) was a British-American classical archaeologist and art historian.[1] She was a prominent figure and an authority in her field.
Early life
Gisela Richter was born in
London, England, the daughter of
Jean Paul and Louise (Schwaab) Richter.[2] Both of her parents and her sister, Irma, were art historians specialised in Italian Renaissance. Richter was educated at Maida Vale School, one of the finest schools for women at the time. She decided to become a classical archaeologist while attending
Emmanuel Loewy's lectures at the
University of Rome around 1896. In 1901, she began attending
Girton College at the
University of Cambridge. At Girton, Richter's six closest friends included Lady Dorothy Georgiana Howard, the daughter of the
9th Earl and "
Radical Countess" of Carlisle, and future candidate for Roman Catholic Sainthood
Anna Abrikosova. Richter was included when all seven girls were brought by Lady Dorothy to
Castle Howard and
Naworth Castle as honored guests during college vacations.[3]
Richter left Girton in 1904 without a degree, since women at the time could not graduate, and she spent a year at the
British School at Athens between 1904 and 1905.[4] Richter moved to the U.S. in 1905 and became a naturalized American citizen in 1917.
Career
Richter joined the
Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York as an assistant in 1905,[5] where she was asked to create a catalogue for a collection of Greek vases recently acquired by the Met from the Canessa Brothers, the famous European art dealers.[6] She became assistant curator in 1910, promoted to associate curator in 1922, and curator of Greek and Roman art in 1925, a position she held until 1948 when she retired. Richter became honorary curator until her death in 1972. She became the first woman to hold the title of curator at the Met when she was appointed to the post in 1925.[7][8] As curator, she was one of the most influential people in classical art history at the time.
In 1952, Richter moved to
Rome, Italy, where she died in 1972.[12] She is buried in Rome's
Protestant Cemetery. Writing 30 years after Richter's death,
Camille Paglia paid tribute to her "for her clarity and rigor of mind; her fineness of sensibility and connoisseurship; her attention to detail and her power of observation and deduction; her mastery of form and design".
^Levkoff, Mary L. (2008). Hearst the Collector, Museum Edition. New York: Harry N Abrams Inc. p. 205.
ISBN978-0810982437.
^Puma, Carlos A. Picón; et al. (2007). Art of the classical world in the Metropolitan Museum of Art: Greece, Cyprus, Etruria, Rome. New York: the Metropolitan Museum of Art. p. 8.
ISBN978-1588392176.