History of Stylistic Studies in the Historiography of Art in the West

“Style” can be generally considered as patterns or recognizable characteristics of an object or set of objects. The advantage of style in comparison to the other classification methods is that the most knowledge can be acquired by the least historical records. “Style” has been applied in the history of literature from ancient era، but it has been used in the history of arts from eighteen century. For the first time، “style” was applied to interpret classical arts by Winckelmann. Later، other historians paid attention to the other aspects of style: empiricists have only emphasized on visual studies; Hegelians have attempted to establish a relation between style and zeigeist; recent Historians have emphasized on the artists and mechanism of producing of works of art. Generally، evolution of concept and theory of style in the west shows that the importance of works of arts and the artist''s willingness have been increased to historians of art. In this article we try to explain the concept of style and stylistic principles in the west.