Ernst Benkard (27 February 1883 – 8 May 1946) was a German art historian and private lecturer.
Biography Born in Frankfurt, Benkard attended a grammar school, then studied art history and obtained his doctorate in 1907.Breisgau-Geschichtsverein Schauinsland: Zeitschrift des Breisgau-Geschichtsvereins Schauinsland. Breisgau-Geschichtsverein Schauinsland, 2000, .
Among other things he worked as a correspondent and art critic for the Frankfurter Zeitung.Benkard, Ernst, in Hessische Biografie on www.lagis-hessen.de From the winter semester 1927/28 to the winter semester 1937/38, he was employed at the , where he mainly offered classes on regional art as well as events on Italian Renaissance.Frankfurt on kg.ikb.kit.edu He is said to have reported on the 1937 Große Deutsche Kunstausstellung with "barely concealed irony, distance, and rejection."Dagmar Bussiek: Benno Reifenberg (1892-1970). Wallstein Verlag, 2012,
Benkard's works include an illustrated book on the death masks of statesmen and artists, which was published in Berlin in 1926 with a foreword by Georg Kolbe. It bears the title Das ewige AntlitzDas ewige Antlitz on WorldCat (The Eternal Face) and immediately triggered a dispute with about a death mask of William Shakespeare.Ernst Gundolf: Werke. Wallstein Verlag, 2006, , For the dispute over Shakespeare's death mask, see also the interview with Hildegard Hammerschmidt-Hummel on 9 May 2006 on the occasion of the publication of her book Die authentischen Gesichtszüge William Shakespeares. The poet's death mask and portraits from three stages of his life on www.hammerschmidt-hummel.de. In Das ewige Antlitz, Benkard also introduced L'Inconnue de la Seine, about which he poetically wrote that she is for us "a tender butterfly, which, carefreely elated, has fluttered and scorched its fine wings before time at the lamp of life".Quoted after Dorle Dracklé, Bilder vom Tod. LIT Verlag Münster, 2001, , . Another temporarily popular work of art, allegedly based on a death mask, was the in Halle, which Benkard described as a "mannequin" and a "doll".Quoted after Horst Bredekamp, Bodies in Action and Symbolic Forms. Walter de Gruyter, 2012, , .
Benkard died in Freiburg im Breisgau.
References
External links Ernst Benkard on DNB Ernst Benkard on Goodreads Ernst Benkard: "Das ewige Antlitz - Eine Sammlung von Totenmasken", 1929 on Antiquitaeten-erfurt.de