Short answers, pulled from the story.
Art history is defined as an academic discipline devoted to studying artistic production and visual culture throughout human history. It uses historical methods or philosophies like historical materialism to analyze artworks. This field examines how art impacts societies and cultures while tracking changes in style over time.
Pliny the Elder wrote passages about Greek sculpture and painting before his death on the 2nd of May 1979 AD. These texts form the earliest surviving writing classified as art history. Pliny discussed techniques used by the painter Apelles between 332 BC and 329 BC.
Giorgio Vasari published Lives of the Most Excellent Painters Sculptors and Architects in the sixteenth century. The Tuscan painter emphasized art's progression and development as a milestone in this field. His book featured biographies of Italian artists including Michelangelo whom he knew personally.
Heinrich Wölfflin studied under Burckhardt in Basel before developing his own theories between 1864 and 1945. Unlike Giorgio Vasari he remained uninterested in artist biographies proposing an art history without names instead. He introduced three concepts focusing on psychology applied by Wilhelm Wundt.
Fritz Saxl brought Warburg's library to London establishing the Warburg Institute when forced to leave Germany in the 1930s. A group gathered in Hamburg in 1920 to study Iconography including Erwin Panofsky and Aby Warburg. These scholars developed vocabulary still used by art historians today.