December 09, 2012 <Back to Index>
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Johann Joachim Winckelmann (December 9, 1717 – June 8, 1768), a German art historian and archaeologist, was a pioneering Hellenist who first articulated the difference between Greek, Greco - Roman and Roman art. "The prophet and founding hero of modern archaeology," Winckelmann was one of the founders of scientific archaeology and first applied the categories of style on a large, systematic basis to the history of art. Many consider him the father of the discipline of art history. His would be the decisive influence on the rise of the neoclassical movement during the late 18th century. His writings influenced not only a new science of archaeology and art history but Western painting, sculpture, literature and even philosophy. Winckelmann's History of Ancient Art (1764) was one of the first books written in German to become a classic of European literature. His subsequent influence of Lessing, Herder, Goethe, Hölderlin, Heine, Nietzsche, George, and Spengler has been provocatively called "the Tyranny of Greece over Germany." Today, Humboldt University of Berlin's Winckelmann Institute is dedicated to the study of classical archaeology. Winckelmann was born in poverty in Stendal, Margraviate of Brandenburg.
His father, Martin Winckelmann, was a cobbler, while his mother, Anna
Maria Meyer, was the daughter of a weaver. Winckelmann's early years
were full of hardship, but his thirst for learning pushed him forward.
Later in Rome, when he was a famous scholar, he wrote: "One gets
spoiled here; but God owed me this; in my youth I suffered too much." Winckelmann attended the Coellnische Gymnasium in Berlin and the school at Salzwedel, and in 1738, at age 21, went as a student of theology to the University of Halle.
However, Winckelmann was no theologian; he had become interested in
Greek classics in his youth, but soon realized that the teachers in
Halle could not satisfy his intellectual interests in this field. He
nonetheless devoted himself privately to Greek art and literature and followed the lectures of Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten, who coined the term "aesthetics". With the intention of becoming a physician, in 1740 Winckelmann attended medical classes at Jena.
He also taught languages. From 1743 to 1748, he was the deputy
headmaster of the gymnasium of Seehausen in the Altmark but Winckelmann
felt that work with children was not his true calling. Moreover, his
means were insufficient: his salary was so low that he had to rely on
his students' parents for free meals. He was thus obliged to accept a
tutorship near Magdeburg. While tutor for the powerful Lamprecht family, he fell into unrequited love with the handsome Lamprecht son. This was one of a series of such loves throughout his life. His enthusiasm for the male form excited Winckelmann's budding admiration of ancient Greek and Roman sculpture.
In 1748, Winckelmann wrote to
Count Heinrich von Bünau:
"... little value is set on Greek literature, to which I have devoted
myself so far as I could penetrate, when good books are so scarce and
expensive." In the same year, Winckelmann was appointed secretary of
Bünau's library at Nöthnitz, near Dresden. The library contained some 40,000 volumes. Winckelmann had read Homer, Herodotus, Sophocles, Xenophon, and Plato, but he found at Nöthnitz the works of such famous Enlightenment writers as Voltaire and Montesquieu.
To leave behind the spartan atmosphere of Prussia was a great relief
for him. Winckelmann's major duty was to assist von Bünau in
writing a book on the Holy Roman Empire and
help collect material for it. During this period he made several visits
to the collection of antiquities at Dresden, but his description of its
best paintings was left unfinished. The treasures there, nevertheless,
awakened in Winckelmann an intense interest in art, which was deepened
by his association with various artists, particularly the painter Adam Friedrich Oeser (1717 – 1799)
-- Goethe's future friend and influence — who encouraged Winckelmann in
his aesthetic studies. (Winckelmann subsequently exercised a powerful
influence over Johann Wolfgang von Goethe). In 1755, Winckelmann published his Gedanken über die Nachahmung der griechischen Werke in Malerei und Bildhauerkunst ("Thoughts on the Imitation of Greek Works in Painting and Sculpture"), followed
by a feigned attack on the work and a defense of its principles,
ostensibly by an impartial critic. The Gedanken contains the first statement of the doctrines he afterwards developed, the ideal of "noble simplicity and quiet grandeur" (edle Einfalt und stille Größe)
and the definitive assertion, "The one way for us to become great,
perhaps inimitable, is by imitating the ancients." The work was warmly
admired not only for the ideas it contained, but for its literary
style. It made Winckelmann famous, and was reprinted several times and
soon translated into French. In England, Winckelmann's views stirred
discussion in the 1760s and 1770s, although it was limited to artistic
circles: Henry Fuseli's translation of Reflections on the Painting and Sculpture of the Greeks was published in 1765, but the text did not find enough readers to warrant a second edition. In
1751, the papal nuncio and Winckelmann's future employer, Alberico
Archinto, visited Nöthnitz, and in 1754 Winckelmann joined the
Roman Catholic Church. Goethe concluded that Winckelmann was a pagan,
but his conversion ultimately opened the doors of the papal library to
him. On the strength of the Gedanken über die Nachahmung der Griechischen Werke, Augustus III, king of Poland and elector of Saxony, granted him a pension of 200 thalers, so that he could continue his studies in Rome. Winckelmann arrived in Rome in November 1755. His first task there was to describe the statues in the Cortile del Belvedere — the Apollo Belvedere, the Laocoön, the so-called Antinous, and the Belvedere Torso — which represented to him the "utmost perfection of ancient sculpture." Originally, Winckelmann planned to stay in Italy only two years with the help of the grant from Dresden, but the outbreak of the Seven Years' War (1756 – 1763) changed his plans. He was named librarian to Cardinal Passionei, who was impressed by Winckelmann's beautiful Greek writing. Winckelmann also became librarian to Cardinal Archinto, and received much kindness from Cardinal Passionei. After their deaths, Winckelmann was hired as librarian in the house of Alessandro Cardinal Albani, who was forming his magnificent collection of antiquities in the villa at Porta Salaria. With the aid of his new friend, the painter Anton Raphael Mengs (1728 – 79),
with whom he first lived in Rome, Winckelmann devoted himself to the
study of Roman antiquities and gradually acquired an unrivalled
knowledge of ancient art. Winckelmann's method of careful observation
allowed him to identify Roman copies of Greek art, something that was
unusual at that time — Roman culture was considered the ultimate
achievement of Antiquity. His friend Mengs became the channel through
which Winkelmann's ideas were realized in art and spread around Europe.
("The only way for us to become great, yes, inimitable, if it is
possible, is the imitation of the Greeks," Winckelmann declared in the Gedanken.
With imitation he did not mean slavish copying: "... what is imitated,
if handled with reason, may assume another nature, as it were, and
become one's own.") Neoclassical artists attempted to revive the spirit
as well as the forms of ancient Greece and Rome. Mengs's contribution
in this was considerable — he was widely regarded as the greatest living
painter of his day. The French painter Jacques - Louis David met
Mengs in Rome (1775 – 80) and was introduced through him to the artistic
theories of Winckelmann. Earlier, while in Rome, Winckelmann met the
Scottish architect Robert Adam, whom he influenced to become a leading proponent of neoclassicism in architecture. Winckelmann's ideals were later popularized in England through the reproductions of Josiah Wedgwood's "Etruria" factory (1782). In 1760, Winckelmann's Description des pierres gravées du feu Baron de Stosch appeared, followed in 1762 by his Anmerkungen über die Baukunst der Alten ("Observations on the Architecture of the Ancients"), which included an account of the temples at Paestum. In 1758 and 1762, he visited Naples to observe the archaeological excavations being conducted at Pompeii and Herculaneum. "Despite his association with Albani, Winckelmann steered clear of the
shady world of art dealing which had compromised the scholarly
respectability of such brilliant, if much less systematic antiquarians as Francesco Ficoroni and the Baron Stosch." Winckelmann's
poverty may have played a part: the trade in antiquities was an
expensive and speculative game. In 1763, with Albani's advocacy, he was
appointed Clement XIII's Prefect of Antiquities. From
1763, while retaining his position with Albani, Winckelmann worked as a
prefect of antiquities (Prefetto delle Antichità) and scriptor
(Scriptor linguae teutonicae) of the Vatican. Winckelmann visited
Naples again, in 1765 and 1767, and wrote for the use of the electoral
prince and princess of Saxony his Briefe an Bianconi, which were published, eleven years after his death, in the Antologia romana. Winckelmann contributed various essays to the Bibliothek der schönen Wissenschaften; and, in 1766, published his Versuch einer Allegorie. Of much greater importance was the work entitled Monumenti antichi inediti ("Unpublished monuments of antiquity", 1767 – 1768), prefaced by a Trattato preliminare,
which presented a general sketch of the history of art. The plates in
this work are representations of objects which had either been falsely
explained or not explained at all. Winckelmann's explanations were of
tremendous use to the future science of archaeology, by showing through
observational method that the ultimate sources of inspiration of many
works of art supposed to be connected with Roman history were to be
found in Homer. Winckelmann's masterpiece, the Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums ("The
History of Ancient Art Among the Greeks"), published in 1764, was soon
recognized as a permanent contribution to European literature. In this
work, "Winckelmann's most significant and lasting achievement was to
produce a thorough, comprehensive and lucid chronological account of
all antique art — including that of the Egyptians and Etruscans." This
was the first work to define in the art of a civilization an organic
growth, maturity, and decline. Here, it included the revelatory tale
told by a civilization's art and artifacts — these, if we look closely,
tell us their own story of cultural factors, such as climate, freedom,
and craft. Winckelmann sets forth both the history of Greek art and of Greece.
He presents a glowing picture of the political, social, and
intellectual conditions which he believed tended to foster creative activity in ancient Greece. The
fundamental idea of Winckelmann's artistic theories are that the end of
art is beauty, and that this end can be attained only when individual
and characteristic features are strictly subordinated to an artist's
general scheme. The true artist, selecting from nature the phenomena
suited to his purpose and combining them through the exercise of his
imagination, creates an ideal type in which normal proportions are
maintained, and particular parts, such as muscles and veins, are not
permitted to break the harmony of the general outlines. In
1768 Winckelmann journeyed north over the Alps, but the Tyrol depressed
him and he decided to return to Italy. However, his friend, the
sculptor and restorer Bartolomeo Cavaceppi managed to persuade him to travel to Munich and Vienna, where he was received with honor by Maria Theresa. On his way back, he was murdered at Trieste on June 8, 1768, in a hotel bed by a fellow traveller, a man named Francesco Arcangeli,
for medals that Maria Theresa had given him. Arcangeli had thought that
he was only "un uomo di poco conto" ("a man of little account"). Winckelmann was buried in the churchyard of Trieste Cathedral.
Domenico Rosetti and Cesare Pagnini documented the last week of
Winckelmann's life; Heinrich Alexander Stoll translated the Italian
document, the so-called "Mordakte Winckelmann", into German. Winckelmann's writings are key to understanding the modern European discovery of: ancient (sometimes idealized) Greece; neoclassicism; and the doctrine of art as imitation (Nachahmung). The mimetic character of art that imitates but does not simply copy, as Winckelmann restated it, is central to any interpretation of Enlightenment classical idealism. Winckelmann stands at an early stage of the transformation of taste in the late 18th century. Winckelmann's study Sendschreiben von den Herculanischen Entdeckungen ("Letter about the Discoveries at Herculaneum") was published in 1762, and two years later Nachrichten von den neuesten Herculanischen Entdeckungen ("Report
on the Latest Discoveries at Herculaneum"). From these scholars
obtained their first real information about the excavations at Pompeii. His major work, Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums (1764,
"The History of Ancient Art"), deeply influenced contemporary views of
the superiority of Greek art. It was translated into French in 1766 and
later into English and Italian. Among others, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
based many of the ideas in his 'Laocoon' (1766) on Winckelmann's views
on harmony and expression in the visual arts. In
the historical portions of his writings, Winckelmann used not only the
works of art he himself had studied but the scattered notices on the
subject to be found in ancient writers; and his wide knowledge and
active imagination enabled him to offer many fruitful suggestions as to
periods about which he had little direct information. To the still
existing works of art, he applied a minute empirical scrutiny. Many of
his conclusions, based on inadequate evidence of Roman copies, would be
modified or reversed by subsequent researchers. Nonetheless, the fervid
descriptive enthusiasm of passages in his work, its strong and yet
graceful style, and its vivid descriptions of works of art gave it a
most immediate appeal. It marked an epoch by indicating the spirit in
which the study of Greek art and of ancient civilization should be
approached, and the methods by which investigators might hope to attain
solid results. To Winckelmann's contemporaries it came as a revelation,
and it exercised a profound influence on the best minds of the age. It
was read with intense interest by Lessing, who found in the earliest of Winckelmann's works the starting point for his Laocoon, and by Herder, Goethe and Kant. |