His father, Eduard Wölfflin, was a professor of classical philology who taught at the Munich university and helped to found and organize the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae.

He is credited with having introduced the teaching method of using twin parallel projectors in the delivery of art history lectures, so that images could be compared when magic lanterns became less dangerous.

Notable students of Wölfflin included Frederick Antal, Paul Frankl, Carola Giedion-Welcker, Richard Krautheimer, Kurt Martin, Jakob Rosenberg, Fritz Saxl, and Klara Steinweg.

The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism published a special issue commemorating the 100th anniversary of the publication of the Principles in 2015, edited by Bence Nanay.

[11] "Heinrich Wölfflin, perhaps the most important art historian of his generation, was so receptive to the aesthetic purism prevailing at the time that he developed a technique of dissociation that was as extreme as the Remy de Gourmont."