Richard Offner

Richard Offner (June 30, 1889 – August 26, 1965) was an Austrian-American art historian dedicated to the study of Florentine paintings from the Renaissance.

Biography Offner was born in Vienna, Austria, on June 30, 1889. In 1891, his family emigrated to New York City. He pursued his undergraduate degree at Harvard University from 1909 to 1912, continuing as a Fellow at the American Academy in Rome from 1912 to 1914.

Offner died in Florence, Italy on August 26, 1965, aged 76.

Works Offner published 12 volumes of his Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting through the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University.

Offner's photographic archive is now housed in the Department of Image Collections, National Gallery of Art. It was donated to the Gallery by the Institute of Fine Arts, New York, along with other scholars' collections, including: Gertrude Coor, James Stubblebine, Rudolf Meyer Riefstahl, Martin Weinberger and Henry Russell Hitchcock. The Offner Archive contains 50,000 photos, clippings, negatives, research and lecture notes. His attributions and organizational system have been preserved.