WINCKELMANN, JOHANN JOACHIM

WINCKELMANN, JOHANN JOACHIM. - Archaeologist, art historian, and philosopher, b. at Stendal in Prussia on 3 Dec. 1717, d. at Trieste on 8 June 1768. Of humble origins, he studied at the universities of Halle and Jena; he then refined his studies in Dresden, where, with the help of Abp. Alberico Archinto, nuncio of Bologna, he converted to Catholicism and departed for Italy.

When he arrived in Rome in Nov. 1755, he was 28 years old and already possessed extraordinary cultural preparation, oriented particularly toward the history, languages, and art of the ancients. In Rome he found an environment particularly suited to developing his interests, at a time when, throughout Europe—and especially in Italy—archaeological studies were being transferred onto a truly scientific plane. And in Rome W. resided for the rest of his life, dedicating his activity to the study and organization of the collections of Card. Alessandro Albani, who hosted him in his villa on the Via Salaria, and of the Vatican Museums.

Nevertheless, the greatest significance of W.’s work is connected to his activity as a writer in the field of archaeology and as a historian of ancient art, while his influence must be considered decisive for certain aspects of the new orientation of taste. The fundamental concepts expressed by W. are all linked to the idea of Hellas and Greek art that he had formed. These were his dream, and he had such an enthusiastic and almost hallucinated perception of the beauty of that vanished world that he confirmed, in his clear visionary manner, the idea that that beauty could and should be pursued anew by systematically applying the canons of a doctrine of art. Indeed, he proclaimed that for

an artist, the study of ancient art is preferable to that of nature, because “the beauty of Greek statues can be discovered before the beauty of nature can be discovered, and consequently the former is more striking, less dispersed, more united in a whole.” Indeed, he added, “connoisseurs and imitators of Greek works find in those masterpieces not only the most beautiful nature, but also more than nature, that is, certain ideal beauties of the same.” These orientations presided over the development of some of the most characteristic aspects of Neoclassical taste. Important too was his action as an archaeologist and more as a historian of ancient art, for having imagined and carried out in his publications the idea of an art history not conceived as a series of biographical or monographic essays, as had been done until then, but as a concatenation of facts and phenomena determined by their own laws, in relation to which the personalities of the creators, i.e., the artists, remain in a certain sense in the background; a history of ideas and forms that those ideas assumed in the dialectic of art, understood as the supreme activity of the spirit. This simple observation suffices to grasp the extraordinary importance assumed by W.’s work for all modern art historiography.

Among W.’s principal works are recalled: the essay published in Germany before his transfer to Rome: Gedanken über die Nachahmung der griechischen Werke in der Malerei und Bildhauerkunst (Dresden 1755), the subsequent Erläuterung der Gedanken etc. (ibid. 1756), and above all Geschichte der Kunst des Altertums (ibid. 1764) and Anmerkungen über die Geschichte der Kunst (ibid. 1767), as well as Monumenti antichi inediti spiegati e illustrati (2 vols., Rome 1767).

W.’s works have been published repeatedly, also in collected editions. Translated into Italian, they first appeared in a complete edition at Prato in 1830–33. But even earlier, the Storia delle arti del disegno had been published in Milan in 1779 and in Rome in 1783–84.