Otto Johannes Brendel (October 10, 1901 in Erlangen, Germany – October 8, 1973 in New York City) was a German art historian and scholar of Etruscan art and archaeology.
[1][2] In 1928, he received his Ph.D. from the Ruprecht Karl University of Heidelberg under Ludwig Curtius on the topic of Roman iconography of the Augustan period.
While at Heidelberg, Brendel studied with many notable scholars, including Franz Boll, E. Wayne Craven, Alfred von Domaszewski, Friedrich Karl von Duhn, Richard Carl Meister, Eugen Täubler, the literary theorist Ernst Robert Curtius, Friedrich Gundolf, Karl Jaspers, and the classical art historians Karl Lehmann and Friedrich Zimmer.
In 1956, he became Professor of Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University, and became emeritus in 1963, continuing to teach until his retirement in June 1973.
[4] Otto's wife Maria arranged to have many of his unfinished works published after his death.