14 Facts About Johannes Wilde

Johannes Wilde CBE was a Hungarian art historian and teacher of art history.

Johannes Wilde later became an Austrian, and then a British, citizen.

Johannes Wilde was a noted expert on the drawings of Michelangelo.

Johannes Wilde was born Janos Wilde on 2 July 1891 in Budapest, Hungary.

Johannes Wilde was the last of six children of Richard Wilde and his wife Rosa nee Somlyaky.

Johannes Wilde returned to Budapest and was until 1922 an assistant to Simon Meller in the department of prints and drawings of the Museum of Fine Arts.

Max Dvorak died in February 1921, and in 1922 Johannes Wilde moved permanently to Vienna in order to work with Carl Maria Swoboda on a collected edition of Dvorak's writings.

Johannes Wilde became an Austrian citizen in 1928, and on 6 February 1930 married the art historian Julia Gyarfas.

From 1923 Johannes Wilde worked as an assistant Keeper, and later as a Keeper, at the Kunsthistorisches Museum of Vienna, where he worked principally on Italian Renaissance paintings.

Johannes Wilde carefully researched and catalogued the Italian paintings, many of which were documented in David Teniers the Younger's Theatrum Pictorium, though with incorrect attributions.

Johannes Wilde first published his findings on The Gypsy Madonna and The Three Philosophers' In the next eight years Wilde made more than 1000 X-ray photographs of works in the museum.

Johannes Wilde soon went to Aberystwyth to work on Seilern's pictures, which had been sent to the National Library of Wales for safety at the beginning of the Second World War.

Johannes Wilde worked on the pictures of the National Gallery, which were in the same building.

The British Museum collection of Italian drawings was housed there and, through Arthur Ewart Popham, Johannes Wilde was asked in June 1940 by the Trustees of the museum to start work on cataloguing them too.