Let me end with the con­fes­sion of a per­son­al incon­sis­ten­cy: I was trained almost forty years ago in the two then out­stand­ing Euro­pean cen­tres for the study of art his­to­ry, in Vien­na and Berlin. But I soon real­ized that my spe­cif­ic gifts would not make me into a real art his­to­ri­an who would write a biog­ra­phy of Raphael or Cézanne. Thus I have become a vagrant, a wan­der­er through the muse­ums and libraries of Europe, at times a labour­er till­ing the soil on the bor­der­strip between art his­to­ry, Lit­er­a­ture, sci­ence and reli­gion, and I must con­fess that I almost always enjoyed this life and am still enjoy­ing it very much. I wish that one or oth­er of you would, not exact­ly fol­low my pecu­liar exam­ple, but take up art his­to­ry as your life’s busi­ness.

Fritz Saxl, “Why Art His­to­ry? (Roy­al Hol­loway Col­lege, March 1948)” en Lec­tures, Lon­don: The War­burg Insti­tute, Uni­ver­si­ty of Lon­don, 1957, I, p. 357.