Johann Joachim Winckelmann

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Johann Joachim Winckelmann
Portrait by Raphael Mengs, after 1755
Born	9 December 1717(1717-12-09) Stendal
Died	8 June 1768 (aged 50) Trieste
Occupation	Archaeology,Art history author
Nationality	German
Writing period	1755 - 1768
Subjects	Archaeology;Art history
Literary movement	Hellenism, Greek Revival, neoclassicism

Johann Joachim Winckelmann (December 9, 1717 - June 8, 1768) a German art historian and archaeologist, ^[1] was a pioneering Hellenist who first articulated the difference between Greek, Greco-Roman and Roman art. His would be the decisive influence on the rise of the neoclassical movement during the late eighteenth century. His writings influenced not only a new science of archaeolgy and art history but Western painting, sculpture, literature and even philosophy.

"The prophet and founding hero of modern archaeology,"^[2] 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 to be the father of art history.^[3] 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 on Lessing, Herder, Goethe, Hölderlin, Heine, Nietzsche, George, and Spengler, has been lovingly called "the Tyranny of Greece over Germany."^[4]

[edit] Biography

[edit] Early life

Winckelmann was born in poverty in Stendal, Margraviate of Brandenburg. His father, Martin Winckelmann, was a cobbler, and mother, Anna Maria Meyer, a daughter of a weaver. Winckelmann's early years were full of hardships 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."

He attended the Coellnische Gymnasium in Berlin and the school at Salzwedel and, in 1738, at 21, was induced to go as a student of theology to the University of Halle. However, Winckelmann was no theologian - he had become interested in Greek classics already in his youth, but he soon realized that teachers in Halle could not satisfy his intellectual pursuits in this field and he soon devoted himself enthusiastically to Greek art and literature. He followed the lectures of Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten, who coined the term "aesthetics".

Later, with the intention of becoming a physician, in 1740 he attended medical classes at Jena. Between the terms and sometimes during them he worked as a tutor of languages. In 1743 he became the deputy head master of the gymnasium of Seehausen. Winckelmann felt that his work with children was not his true calling. Moreover, his salary was so low that he had to rely on his students' parents to have free meals; overall his means were insufficient. He was obliged to accept a tutorship near Magdeburg. While tutor for the powerful Lamprecht family, he fell into unrequited love with the handsome Lemprecht son.^[5] This was one of a series of such loves throughout his life.^[6] His enthusiasm for the male form excited Winckelmann's budding admiration of ancient Greek sculpture.^[7] From 1743 to 1748, he was associate-rector of a school at Seehausen in the Altmark.

[edit] Bünau's librarian

In 1748, he wrote to Count Henry 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 then found 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 to write a book on the German-Roman or Holy Roman Empire and collect materials 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 association with various artists, particularly the painter Adam Friedrich Oeser (1717-1799), Goethe's future friend and influence, who encouraged him in his aesthetic studies. - Winckelmann too exercised a powerful influence over Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (see Goethe's Winkelmann und sein Jahrhundert, 1805). Winckelmann's study of ancient literature had inspired Oeser with a desire to visit Rome, and he became librarian to Cardinal Passionei, in 1754. This compelled him reluctantly to join the Roman Catholic Church.

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." It was warmly admired not only for the ideas it contained, but for its style. It made Winckelmann famous and was reprinted several times and soon translated into French. In England, Winkelmann's views stirred discussion in the 1760s and 1770s. Henry Fuseli's translation of his Reflections on the Painting and Sculpture of the Greeks was published in 1765, but the translation did not find enough readers to warrant a second edition.

[edit] Rome

In 1751 the papal nuncio, Alberico Archinto, visited Nothenitz, and in 1754 Winckelmann joined the Roman Catholic Church. Goethe concluded that Winckelmann was a pagan, but his conversion finally opened the doors of the Pope's library to him. He was named librarian to Domenico Cardinal Passionei, who was impressed by Winckelmann's beautiful Greek hand. After publishing Gedanken über die Nachahmung der Griechischen Werke in der Malerei und Bildhauerkunst, Winckelmann moved to Rome. Augustus III, king of Poland and elector of Saxony, granted him a pension of 200 thalers, so that he might continue his studies in Rome.

He arrived in Rome in November 1755. His first task in Rome 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." He became librarian to Cardinal Archinto, and received much kindness from Cardinal Passionei. After their deaths, Winckelmann was received as librarian and as a friend into the house of Alessandro Cardinal Albani, who was forming his magnificent collection of antiquities in the villa at Porta Salaria, and became his patron.

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 devoted himself earnestly (with the aid of his new friend and lover,^[8] the painter Anton Raphael Mengs (1728-79) whom he first lived with in Rome) to the study of Roman antiquities and gradually acquired an unrivalled knowledge of ancient art. 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 (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." Winckelmann discredited Roman copies of Greek art, a stance that was unusual at that time—Roman culture was considered the ultimate achievement of Antiquity. 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 in his day widely regarded as the greatest living painter. The French painter Jacques-Louis David met Mengs in Rome (1775-80) and was introduced through him to the artistic theories of Winckelmann. Also, while in Rome, Winklemann met the English architect Robert Adam, whom he influenced to become a leading proponant of neoclassicism in architecture.^[9] Winklemann's ideals were popularized in England through the reproductions of Josiah Wedgewood's "Etruria" factory (1782).^[10]

In 1760 Winckelmann's Description des pierres gravées du feu Baron de Stosch appeared, followed by his Anmerkungen über die Baukunst der Alten ("Observations on the Architecture of the Ancients") in 1762, 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," Haskell and Penny have observed;^[11] 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.

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.

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 much of the ideas in his 'Laocoon' (1766) on Winckelmann's views on harmony and expression in the visual arts. Lessing also stated that painting uses completely different means or signs than does poetry, which depicts progressive action rather than the visible and stationary. 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 again visited Naples, 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.

[edit] Masterwork

His masterpiece, the Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums ("The History of Ancient Art Among the Greeks"), issued 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."^[12] This was the first work to define in the art of a civilization an organic growth, maturity, and decline. Here, it included the relevatory tale told by a civilization's artifacts of cultural and technical factors such as climate, freedom, and craftsmanship. Winckelmann sets forth both the history of Greek art and of Greece, and the principles on which it seemed its art was based. He also 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 his 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 fitted for his purpose, and combining them through the 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.

[edit] Death

Winckelmann, in luxurious undress, by Anton von Maron, 1768: an engraving of an Antinous lies before him (Schlossmuseum Weimar)

Winckelmann contributed various essays to the Bibliothek der schönen Wissenschaften; and, in 1766 published his Versuch einer Allegorie. Of far 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 the highest service to archaeology, by showing that in the case of many works of art supposed to be connected with Roman history the ultimate sources of inspiration were to be found in Homer.

In 1768 he started his journey 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 honour 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").

He was buried in the churchyard of the cathedral of St. Giusto at Trieste. 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.

[edit] Critical response

Winckelmann's writings are key to understanding the German discovery of an idealised Greece^[13] and neoclassicism; the doctrine of art as imitation (Nachamung), the mimetic character of art that imitates but does not simply copy, as Winckelmann restated it,^[14] is central to any interpretation of Enlightenment classical idealism.^[15] Winckelmann stands at an early stage of the transformation of taste in the later eighteenth century.^[16]

In the historical portion 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 existing works he applied a minute empirical scrutiny. Many of his conclusions, based on inadequate evidence of Roman copies, would be modified or reversed by his subsequent research. 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 its most immediate appeal, even though some particulars that led to his conclusions have been superseded by later archaeological finds that shifted the emphases of scholarship. It marked an epoch by indicating the spirit in which the study of Greek art 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. In the English language, acceptance of Winckelmann's major writings was slow: Henry Fuseli translated some minor writings, but Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums was not translated into English until 1880, in spite of Walter Pater's appreciative essay of 1867 that finishes The Renaissance.^[17]

[edit] Works

The most accessible edition of selected works, in condensed forms, is David Irwin, Winckelmann: Writings on Art (London: Phaidon) 1972; the critical edition is Walther Rehm and Hellmut Sichtermann, eds., Kleine Schriften, Vorreden, Entwürfen (Berlin) 1968.

1. Gedanken über die Nachahmung der griechischen Werke in der Malerei und Bildhauerkunst ("Thoughts on the Imitation of Greek Works in Painting and Sculpture"), followed by a feigned attack on the work, and a defence of its principles, nominally by an impartial critic. (First edition of only 50 copies 1755, 2nd ed. 1756)
2. Description des pierres gravées du feu Baron de Stosch (1760)
3. Anmerkungen über die Baukunst der Alten ("Remarks on the Architecture of the Ancients"), including an account of the temples at Paestum (1762)
4. Sendschreiben von den Herculanischen Entdeckungen ("Letter About the Discoveries at Herculaneum) (1762)
5. ("Essay on the Beautiful in Art") (1763), an epistolary essay addressed to Friedrich Rudolph von Berg
6. Nachrichten von den neuesten Herculanischen Entdeckungen (Report About the Latest Herculanean Discoveries) (1764)
7. Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums ("History of Ancient Art") (1764)
8. Versuch einer Allegorie ("Attempt at an Allegory") (1766), which, although containing the results of much thought and reading, is not conceived in a thoroughly critical spirit.
9. Monumenti antichi inediti (1767-1768), prefaced by a Trattato preliminare, presenting 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.
10. Briefe an Bianconi, which were published eleven years after his death, in the Antologia Romana.

[edit] References

Efthalia Rentetzi,  Johann Joachim Winckelmann und der altgriechische Geist, in “Philia -Universität Würzburg”, vol. I, (2006), pp. 26-30, ISSN 0936-1944

[edit] External links

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Johann Joachim Winckelmann

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