Reflections

There is a similarity between judging works of art and reading books: you believe that you are understanding what you read, but when you have to explain it, you do not understand it. It is one thing to read Homer, but it is quite different to translate him while you are reading. Looking at art with good taste and looking at it with understanding are two different things, and from one generally valid thought you cannot conclude that someone has knowledge of it. Just as it does not follow that Cicero had thoroughly understood what he had written when he says that Canachus and Calamis had more hardness than Polycletus.

It is difficult to write with brevity, and not every work lends itself to it. For in writing about something more fully, you cannot so easily be taken at your word. But our times require brevity especially because of the large number of writings available. The man who wrote to someone saying “I did not have time to make this letter shorter” recognized what you needed to do to write with brevity.

Plato never speaks of himself in his writings.

In my attempt at writing a History of Art my intention was to proceed more like Herodotus than like Thucydides: the former starts from the times when the Greeks began to become great and stops with the humiliation of their enemies; the latter starts with the times when the Greeks began to feel unhappy.

I provide here a description of the famous torso in the Belvedere, which is generally called the Torso of Michelangelo, because this work was especially highly regarded by Michelangelo, and he made many studies of it. As is well known, it is a mutilated statue of a seated Hercules, and the master who made it is Apollonius, the son of Nestor of Athens. This description only concerns the ideal represented by the statue, especially because it is ideal in its conception. And it is one work from a similar description of several statues.

The first work I applied myself to in Rome was describing the statues in the Belvedere, namely the Apollo, the Laocoon, the so-called Antinous, and this torso, as the most prefect examples of ancient sculpture. The presentation of each statue was intended to be in two parts: the first concerning its ideal aspect, and the second its artistic qualities. And it was my intention to have the works themselves drawn and engraved by the best artist available. This enterprise was, however, beyond my means, and would depend on advances provided by generous enthusiasts. So that is why this draft, over which I have pondered much and for a long time, has remained unfinished, and the present description still requires some final touches.

If you wish to pass judgment on works of art, then first look beyond that which draws praise by its diligence and hard work, and pay attention to what has been produced by understanding. For diligence can be in evidence without talent, and this is also noticeable where diligence is lacking. An image created very laboriously by a painter or sculptor can as such be compared with a book produced laboriously. For just as writing in a learned way is not the greatest art, so an image that has been thoroughly painted in a fine and smooth way is no proof of a great artist. And the unnecessarily accumulated passages from books that were mostly never read are to a written work what the indication of every small detail is to an image. This observation will ensure that you are not astonished at the laurel leaves on the Apollo and the Daphne by Bernini, nor at the net on a statue in Germany by Adam the Elder. Thus no distinguishing features that have been produced by diligence alone enable one to recognize or differentiate the ancient from the modern.

Pay attention to whether the master whose work you are observing has thought it out himself or only imitated others, whether he recognized the primary aim of art, which is beauty, or created according to forms with which he was familiar, and whether he worked like a man or played like a child.

Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717-68) has long been recognized as a founder of modern methodologies in the fields of art history and archaeology. He also contributed considerably to studies of classical Greek architecture, and applied empirically derived categories of style to the analysis of classical works of art and architecture. He was also one of the first to undertake detailed empirical examinations of artifacts and describe them precisely in a way that enabled reasoned conclusions to be drawn and theories to be advanced about ancient societies and their cultures.

The present volume provides a selection of Winckelmann's essays ordered thematically, allowing the reader to discover his approaches to the study of classical Greek art, sculpture, and architecture as well as to his methodology in analyzing artifacts found at the site of the town of Herculaneum, buried, along with Pompeii and Stabiae, by the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79. The essays have been newly translated for this edition and are preceded in this introduction by a brief account of his life and works, including consideration of the circumstances of his murder, together with a consideration of some of the major influences of his writings. This account is followed by an assessment of his influence on his contemporaries and subsequent writers and artists. At the end of this introduction more detailed information is provided on the organization of the present volume and the principles that were followed in the translation and editing process.

Good taste, which is spreading more and more throughout the world, first started to develop in the climate of Greece. All the inventions of foreign peoples came to Greece only as the first seed, as it were, and acquired a different character and form in the country that Minerva, it is said, allocated as an abode for the Greeks, above all other countries, because of the temperate seasons she found there, and because it was a country that would bring forth wise men.

The taste with which this nation imbued its works has remained unique to it. It has rarely spread far from Greece without losing something, and in remote climatic regions it was only recognized late. It was without doubt completely foreign to northern climes at the time when the two arts of which the Greeks are the great teachers found few admirers: at the time when the most admirable works of Correggio were hung up in the royal stables in Stockholm as a covering for the windows.

And it has to be admitted that the really fortunate period was the reign of the great August, in which the arts were introduced into Saxony as a foreign colony.

Fragment

Almost a century has flowed by since a great part of the nation, struck with blindness, treasured nothing but that which was new, and they called this period the Golden Age of the Arts. This blindness was indeed a general malady of those times, and in Rome, the seat of the arts, it had much more dangerous consequences. It was the period when the vain splendor of the courts got out of hand and encouraged feebleness, laziness, and servitude among peoples. The various branches of knowledge were in the hands of fashionable scholars, antechamber scholars, and people only tried to learn a lot in order to be able to talk a lot, and appear sharp and effortless. They thought they could shorten the way of reaching the sources of fields of knowledge, and in that way the sources were respected less and finally forgotten. And this corruption spread from fields of knowledge to the arts. The writings of the wise men of Greece were as little read as the statues of their artists were looked at, and the number of those who were able to contemplate the works of ancient art with real understanding was still much less than those who secretly here and there studied the monuments to the intelligence and learning of this nation for their own satisfaction.