Johann Joachim Winckelmann

The German archeologist Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717-1768) redefined archeology as a history of ancient art. His high regard for Greek art greatly influenced German classical literature and stimulated classicism.

The only son of a cobbler, Johann Joachim Winckelmann was born on Dec. 9, 1717, in Stendal, Prussia, and grew up in modest circumstances. From 1738 he studied theology and medicine, then taught in Salzwedel from 1743 to 1748, and from 1748 until 1754 he was librarian for the Count of Bühnau in Nöthnitz near Dresden. Here, in addition to his historical studies, he turned to the fine arts and prepared a description of the paintings in the Dresden Gallery.

In 1754-1755 Winckelmann studied art in Dresden with the painter Adam Friedrich Oeser and came in contact with Italian artists. A result of his studies was his essay "Thoughts on the Imitation of Greek Works in Painting and Sculpture," in which he portrayed an idealized picture of Greek art and saw its spirit as "noble simplicity and silent greatness." Since Greek art was to him the highest artistic achievement, he advocated its imitation by all later cultures. The contemporary, baroque art was to be dismissed since it had grown too remote from the Greek simplicity.

Winckelmann's essay received great acclaim and prepared his way to Rome, where he went in 1755 after becoming a Catholic. In Italy, which he called the land of humanity, he fulfilled his human and intellectual purpose. The southern freedom of mores and ideas recalled his ideal Greece and enabled him to pursue the cult of male beauty which he found embodied in Greek art. Thus Winckelmann devoted his "Dissertation on the Ability to Appreciate the Beautiful in Art and Its Instruction" to his young friend Reinhold von Berg.

As equal, Winckelmann met with Roman scholars and clerics, even lived for a time in the papal residence at Castel Gandolfo. His special friends were the German painter Anton Raphael Mengs and Cardinal Alessandro Albani, in whose palace he lived before moving with him into a newly built villa in the Via Salaria. On the outfitting of this villa with antique sculptures, Winckelmann had a decided influence.

In 1763 Winckelmann was named prefect of Roman antiquities, and he worked also in the Vatican library. In his studies he combined historical awareness with vivid feeling for the present; in his writings he was at once scholar and poet. His descriptions of the statues in the Vatican's Belvedere (only the descriptions of the Apollo and of the Torso were finished) are in their enthusiastic language genial prose poems.

Winckelmann included these descriptions in his major work, History of the Art of Antiquity (1764), the first historical overview of the entire ancient art, born of profound knowledge of the sources and his personal views. His thorough erudition is also apparent in his catalog of the gem collection of Baron Stosch (1758) and in publications on unknown antiques. Winckelmann published lively reports on the excavations in Pompeii and Herculaneum, which he got to know on three journeys, and he wrote also about ancient architecture and allegories in art.

Most of Winckelmann's writings appeared in German, and he never relinquished his bonds with Germany. In 1765 he almost became the librarian of Frederick the Great in Berlin. But as Winckelmann traveled to Germany in April 1768, his love of Rome proved the stronger; beset with deep melancholy he interrupted his journey in Regensburg, traveled to Vienna where he was honored by Empress Maria Theresa, and arrived in Trieste in June. There he met a former-convict cook who robbed and killed him on June 8, 1768.

Further Reading

Wolfgang Leppmann, Winckelmann (1970), is the first biography in English; it provides interesting material on life and education in 18th-century Germany, the first excavations of Pompeii and Herculaneum, and the attitude and policy of the papacy. More specialized are two studies by Henry C. Hatfield: Winckelmann and His German Critics, 1755-1781 (1943) and Aesthetic Paganism in German Literature (1964). □

Winckelmann, Johann Joachim (b Stendal, 9 Dec. 1717; d Trieste, 8 June 1768). German art historian and archaeologist, a key figure in the Neoclassical movement and in the development of art history as an intellectual discipline. He was the son of a poor cobbler, but through hard work he gained a good education, studying at the universities of Halle and Jena. For several years he was a schoolteacher, before obtaining the post of librarian to Count Heinrich von Bünau at Nothnitz, near Dresden, in 1748. This gave him the opportunity to absorb himself in the study of classical antiquity, and in 1755 he managed to reach his goal of Rome. The previous year he had converted to Catholicism to enhance his chances of obtaining a scholarly appointment in Rome, and this did indeed help him to become librarian to Cardinal Alberigo Archinto, whom he had met in Germany. On Archinto's death in 1758 he became librarian to Cardinal Alessandro Albani, a leading collector of antiquities, and this allowed him to lead a life of scholarly research through which he established a European reputation as a writer. In 1768, on the way back to Rome from a visit to Germany and Austria, he was murdered in Trieste; ostensibly he was killed for the sake of some gold and silver medallions he was carrying (gifts from the Empress Maria-Theresa; see Habsburg), but it has been suggested that he had formed a homosexual relationship with his murderer (who was executed).

Winckelmann's two most important books are Gedanken über die Nachahmung der griechischen Werke in der Malerei und Bildhauerkunst, published in 1755, shortly before he left for Rome (Fuseli published an English translation in 1765 under the title Reflections on the Painting and Sculpture of the Greeks), and Geschichte der Kunst des Altertums (History of Ancient Art), published in 1764 (this is the first occurrence of the phrase ‘history of art’ in the title of a book). In these immensely influential works he proclaimed the superiority of Greek art and culture, combining rapturous descriptions of individual works (above all the Apollo Belvedere) with historical analysis. He never went to Greece and unwittingly based most of his observations on Roman copies, but his account of the stylistic development of Greek sculpture was a milestone in archaeological writing, and he is regarded as having laid the foundations of modern methods of art history. His analysis of ancient Greek culture as a unity, and his interpretation of art as an index of the spirit of the time, were novel (he thought that when social conditions in general were good, then art was good, and when one declined the other did also); these ideas were subsequently developed into an entire philosophy of culture by 19th-century German writers. He refined the notions of how a work may be dated or its place of origin located and explained the character of works of art by reference to such factors as climate, religious customs, and social conditions. His interpretation of classical antiquity influenced many contemporary artists—above all Mengs—and it helped to determine aspects of German education into the 20th century.

Winckelmann, Johann Joachim (1717–68). German art-historian and archaeologist. He settled in Rome, became librarian to Cardinal Alessandro Albani (1692–1779), and established himself as a scholar and antiquarian, advising on the acquisition of the Cardinal's great collection of Antique sculpture (many items of which are now in the Glyptothek, Munich). He was an important influence on Neo-Classicism, and especially on the Greek Revival. His two great books, Gedanken über die Nachahmung der griechischen Werke in der Malerei und Bildhauerkunst (1755—published in English in 1765 as Reflections on the Painting and Sculpture of the Greeks) and Geschichte der Kunst des Altertums (History of Ancient Art—1764), proclaimed the superiority of Greek art and subjected it to analysis. His art-historical method and his interpretation of Classical Antiquity informed education, especially in Germany, well into the present century. His notion of the best of Classical art imbued with ‘noble simplicity and calm grandeur’ became deeply embedded in Western thought, and he influenced many artists and architects, notably the painter Anton Raffael Mengs (1728–79—whose ceiling fresco, Parnassus, in the Villa Albani, Rome (1761), was one of the key works of Neo-Classicism), Schinkel, and von Klenze.

Bibliography

Chilvers, Osborne, & Farr (eds.) (1988);
Gaehtgens (1986);
Jane Turner (1996);
W&M (1987)

Johann Joachim Winckelmann , 1717–68, German classical archaeologist and historian of ancient art, in which field he was a noted authority. A convert to Roman Catholicism in 1754, he went to Italy the following year. There he spent the rest of his life in study in the Vatican Library and in research in Rome, Florence, and Naples. His chief book was Geschichte der Kunst des Altertums [history of the art of antiquity] (1764). The first great analysis of art written from a historical perspective, the work deals mainly with Roman art. It served as the foundation for classical art history.

Bibliography: See his Writings on Art (ed. by D. Irwin, 1972); biography by W. Leppmann (1970).