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Johann Joachim Winkelmann (1717-1768) | |
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German art historian and archeologist, who in initiating the "Greek revival" deeply influence the rise of the neoclassical movement during the late 18th century. Winckelmann was the founder of modern scientific archaeology and first applied the categories of style systematically to the history of art. Winckelmann crystallized his famous concept of the essence of Greek art - "Noble simplicity and quiet grandeur" (edle Einfalt und stille Grösse) - in Thoughts on the Imitation of Greek Works in Painting and Sculpture (1755). "Beauty is one of the greatest mysteries of nature." (Winckelmann in The History of Ancient Art, 1764) Johann Joachim Winkelmann was born in Stendal, Prussia, into poverty. 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." At the age of 21 he entered the University of Halle where he studied theology. He had became 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. He followed the lectures of Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten, who coined the term "aesthetics". In 1740 he started to study medicine at Jena. Between the terms and sometimes during them he worked as a tutor of languages in Osterburg in the Altmark, where he also taught himself French. In 1743 he was appointed 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. In 1748 he 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 his library at Nöthnitz, near Dresden. The library contained some 40,000 volumes. Winckelmann had read Homer, Herodotus, Sophocles, Xenophon, and Plato, but now he 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 von Bünau to write a book on the German-Roman Empire. Four volumes had already been finished. During this period he made several visits to the collection of antiquities at Dresden, but his description of its best paintings was left unfinished. Among his new acquaintances was the painter Adam Friedrich Oeser (1717-1799), Goethe's future friend, who encouraged Winckelmann in his aesthetic studies. Wincelman lived for two years in Oeser's home. In 1751 the papal nuncio, Archinto, visited Nothenitz, and in 1754 Winckelmann joined the Roman Catholic Church, with the hope that the church would finance his stay in Italy. Goethe stated, that Winckelmann was a pagan, but his decision finally opened him the doors of the Pope's library. He was named librarian to Domenico Cardinal Passionei, who was impressed by Winckelmann's beautiful Greek writing. After publishing Gedanken über die Nachahmung der Griechischen Werke in der Mahlerey und Bildbauer-Kunst (1755), Winckelmann moved to Rome. There he met the painter Anton Raphael Mengs (1728-1779) , and Alessandro Cardinal Albani, a collector of antiquities, who became his patron. Mengs was 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. With imitation he did not mean slavish copying: "... what is imitated, if handled with reason, may assume an other nature, as it were, and become one's own." The Roman art Winckelmann discredited, which 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 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 to the artistic theories of Winckelman. His painting, 'The Oath of the Horatii' (1784), made in the neoclassical spirit, is one of the greatest interpretations of the French revolutionaries' zeal. Thoughts on the Imitation of Greek Works made Winckelmann famous. It 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 book, Reflections on the Painting and Sculpture of the Greeks, was published in 1765, but the translation was not well received. Originally Winkelmann planned to stay in Italy only two years with the help of a grant from Dresden, but the outbreak of the Seven Years' War (1756-1763) changed his plans. His first task in Rome was to describe the statues in the Belvedere - the 'Apollo', the Laocoõn, the so-called Antinous, and the 'Torso Belvedere' - which represented him the "utmost perfection of ancient sculpture." In 1758 Winckelman visited first time Naples to observe the archaeological excavations being conducted in that vicinity. Usually the excavations of Pompeii (1748) have been considered the decisive stimulus to the new archaeological classicism, but first excavation in Herculaneum took place much earlier. These two cities had been buried by an eruption of Mount Vesuvius in A.D. 79. From the middle of the century the collection of "antiques" becomes a passion all over Europe, discoveries in Pompeii and Herculaneum has a profound effect on taste, especially on interior design, and a journey to Italy is a mark of good breeding. Goethe made his journey to Italy in 1786-88 and although he never met Winckelmann - he was nineteen when Winckelmann died - Goethe found his memory still inspiring. Winckelmann never learned to master Italian perfectly. He lived simply on bread and wine, but partly his asceticism and loneliness was increased by his homosexuality. At the age of 45 he fell in love with a young nobleman, Friedrich von Berg, and wrote for him Abhandlung von der Fähigkeit der Empfindung des Schönen (1763). "As it is confessedly the beauty of man which is to be conceived under one general idea, so I have noticed that those who are observant of beauty only in women, and are moved little or not at all by the beauty of men, seldom have an impartial, vital, inborn instinct for beauty in art," he wrote in the essay. "To such persons the beauty of Greek art will ever seem wanting, because its supreme beauty is rather male than female." Winckelman did not think that women could be fascinated by sculptures presenting naked young males. In his art theory Winckelmann rejected sensual nature of art, manifestation of the passions of the soul, and idealized expressionless beauty, tranquil and passionless aesthetic forms. Likewise in his own sexual life he had to hide his hopes and disappointments behind a facade of diligence and respectability. In 1762 appeared Winkelmann's study Sendschreiben von den Herculanischen Entdeckungen (Letter About the Herculanean Discoveries) and two years later Nachrichten von den neuesten Herculanischen Entdeckungen (Report About the Latest Herculanean Discoveries). His major work, Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums (1764, The History of Anciet Art), influenced deeply contemporary views of the superiority of Greek art. It was translated into France in 1766 and later into English and Italy. Among others Gotthold Ephraim Lessing based much of his ideas in 'Laokoon' (1766) on Winckelmann's views on harmony and expression in 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 Winckelmann worked as a prefect of antiquities (Prefetto delle Antichità) and scriptor (Scriptor linguae teutonicae) of the Vatican. In 1768 he started his journey over the Alps to the North, but the Tyrol depressed him and he decided to return back to Italy. However, his friend, the sculptor Bartolomeo Cavaceppi managed to persuade him into travel to Munich and Vienna, where he met Empress Maria Theresa. Winckelmann was murdered by a fellow-traveller, named Francesco Arcangeli, on June 8, 1768, for medals that Maria Theresa had given him. Arcangeli had thought that he was only "un uomo di poco conto." Winckelmann was buried in Trieste. He never visited Greece, and although he had to form his views of the Hellenic art through copies, his insights have not lost their validity. For further reading: The History of Ancient Art, vol. 1, by Johann J. Winckelmann (1849); Winckelmann. Sein Leben, seine Werke und Seine Zeitgenossen, 3 vols., by Carl Just (1866-1872); The Renaissance by Walter Pater (1873); Wesen und Wandlung des Humanismus by Horst Rüdiger (1937); Winckelman and His German Critics by Henry Hatfield (1943); Johann Joachim Winckelmann: Sprache und Kunstwerk by Hanna Koch (1957); Winckelmann by Walter Leppmann (1971); Johann Joachim Winckelmann 1717-1768, ed. by Thomas W. Gaehtgens (1986); Modern Theories of Art, vol. 1: From Winckelmann to Baudelaire by Moshe Barasch (1990); Flesh and the Ideal: Winckelmann and the Origins of Art History by Alex Potts (August 1994); Winckelmann and the Notion of Aesthetic Education by Jeffrey Morrison (1996); Embodying Ambiguity: Androgyny and Aesthetics from Winckelmann to Keller by Catriona MacLeod (1998) - For further information: Olga's Gallery: Portrait of Johann Joachim Winkelmann by Anton Raphael Mengs Selected works:
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