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Carl Jacob Christoph Burckhardt (May 25, 1818 – August 8, 1897) was a historian of art and culture, and an influential figure in the historiography of each field. He is known as one of the major progenitors of cultural history.[1] Siegfried Giedion described Burckhardt's achievement in the following terms: "The great discoverer of the age of the Renaissance, he first showed how a period should be treated in its entirety, with regard not only for its painting, sculpture and architecture, but for the social institutions of its daily life as well."[2] Burckhardt's best known work is The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (1860).