AS WILL BE SEEN from the Author's Preface, this book is based on some of Professor
Erwin Panofsky's lectures and seminars during a week in the summer of 1952 at Grips-
holm Castle which houses the Swedish National Portrait Gallery. The texts have
been revised and considerably amplified. The occasion developed into a symposium
in which teachers and graduate students from all the universities and major museums
of Sweden participated. The Institute of Art History of the University of Uppsala was
responsible for the arrangements, but the symposium as well as this publication was
made possible by the generous financial assistance of the Gottesmann Foundation.

As an inter-academic affair taking place outside Uppsala--although in surroundings
that to our students of the history of art have become a kind of Akademia--this
symposium was unique in the series of Gottesmann lectures. It has, accordingly, been
considered appropriate to include the publication both in this series and in the Figura
series, published by the Institute of Art History of the University of Uppsala.

The first-mentioned series has now been concluded, and this provides an admirable
opportunity to recall the circumstances of its origin.

In November, 1947, D. S. Gottesmann sent a letter to the Swedish Consul General
in New York, from which the following passages are quoted: "For quite some
time I have felt that the acts of mercy on the part of the Swedish people and
the Swedish Government during the war and since the conclusion of hostilities have
not been fully recognized. While words of appreciation have been expressed from
time to time, I have felt very strongly that these expressions of appreciation and
gratitude should have taken a more concrete form."

On December 2nd, 1947, this letter was followed by a deed of gift to the Uni-
versity of Uppsala. The sum of $50,000 was donated "for the purpose of enabling
the University to arrange for a series of lectures by world-renowned persons, irre-
spective of nationality, in the field of the humanities". The donation served as an
expression of gratitude for certain Swedish initiatives, especially on the part of the
late King Gustav V, in organizing aid to the Jews of the nazi-dominated countries

-VII-