Johann Joachim Winckelmann

“ Enfranchis’d from their tutor’s care, choose rather to make their entrance with some perplexed composition, than with one figure strongly fancied and masterly executed. But let him, who, content to please the few, wants not to earn either bread or applause from a gaping mob, let him remember that the management of a “little” more or less really distinguishes artist from artist; that the truly sensible produces a multiplicity, as well as quickness and delicacy of feelings, whilst the dashing quack tickles only feeble senses and callous organs ”

“ But it is not on the bulk of mankind that we ought to confer the legislative power in the art. And though works of an extensive composition ought certainly to have the support of a vigour and spirit proportioned to their extent, yet there are limits which must not be overleapt: use not so much spirit as to represent the everlasting Father like the cruel God of war, or an ecstasied saint like a priestess of Bacchus.
Indeed, in the eyes of one unacquainted with this characteristick of the sublime, a Madonna of Trevisani will seem preferable to that of Raphael in the royal cabinet at Dresden. ”

“ The ancients made this principle the basis of their youthful profile; which is neither linear nor whimsical, though seldom to be met with in nature: the growth, at least, of climates more indulgent than ours. It consists in the soft coalescence of the brow with the nose. This uniting line so indispensably accompanies beauty, that a person wanting it may appear handsome full-faced; but mean, nay even ugly, when taken in profile. Bernini, that destroyer of art, despised this line, when legislator of taste, as not finding it [261] in common nature, his only model ”

“ Thus he will improve every beauty he discovers in [20] it, and by comparing the beauties of nature with the ideal, form rules for himself.
Then, and not sooner, he, particularly the painter, may be allowed to commit himself to Nature, especially in cases where his art is beyond the instruction of the old marbles, to wit, in drapery; then, like Poussin, he may proceed with more liberty; for “a timid follower will never get the start of his leaders, and he who is at a loss to produce something of his own, will be a bad manager of the productions of another,” as Michael Angelo says ”

“ Jordans, a genius of a lower class, cannot, in the ideal part of painting, by any means be compared with his great master. He had no wings to soar above nature; for which reason he humbly followed, and painted her as he found her: and if this be truth, he, no doubt, had a larger share of it than Rubens.
If the modern artists, with regard to forms and beauty, are not to be directed by antiquity, there is no authority left to influence them. Some, in painting Venus, would give her a Frenchified air [178] ”

“ For, lustiness and full health being the common burden of the praises of children, whose infant forms are not strictly susceptible of that beauty, which belongs to the steadiness of riper years; the imitation of his children has reasonably become a fashion among our artists. But neither this, nor the indulgence of the academy at Vienna, can be, or indeed was meant to be decisive, in favour of the modern children; it only leads us to make a distinction. The ancients [180] went beyond nature, even in their children: the moderns only follow her ”

“ The comparison of Raphael and some of the most celebrated Dutch, and new Italian painters, concerns only the management, (Trattamento) . The endeavours of the former of these, to hide the laborious industry that appears in all their works, gives an additional sanction to my judgment; for, hiding is labour. The most difficult part in performances of the arts, is to spread an air of easiness, the “ut sibi quivis” over them [189] ; of which, among the ancients, the pictures of Nicomachus were entirely destitute [190] . ”

“ When I reflect on this, I am forced to alter my former opinion of the Caricatura, so far as to believe that no artist ever acquired a perfection therein without gaining a farther improvement in the art itself. “It is, says the author, a peculiar distinction of the ancients to have gone beyond nature:” our artists do the same in their Caricaturas: but of what avail to them are the voluminous works they have published on that branch of the art? ”

“ The figure of a man is as susceptible of beauty as that of a youth: but as a various one, not the various alone, is the Gordian knot, it follows, that a youthful figure, drawn at large, and in the highest possible degree of beauty, is, of all problems that can be proposed to the designer, the most difficult. Every one may convince himself of this: take the most beautiful face in modern painting, and it will go hard, but you shall know a still more beautiful one in nature.——I speak thus, after [263] having considered the treasures of Rome and Florence. ”

“ Wound up to the highest pitch of passion, she may force herself upon the duller eye; but the true sphere of her action is simplicity and calmness. In Laocoon sufferings alone had been Parenthyrsos; the artist therefore, in order to reconcile the significative and ennobling qualities of his soul, put him into a posture, allowing for the sufferings that were necessary, the next to a state of tranquillity: a tranquillity however that is characteristical: the soul will be herself—this individual—not the soul of mankind ”

“ Indeed Nature, in so scantily supplying those parts, seemed to derogate as much from the Athenian beauty, as, by her lavishness, from that of the Indian Enotocets, whose ears, we are told, were large enough to serve them for pillows.
As for opportunities to study the nudities, our times, I think, afford as advantageous ones as the Gymnasies of the ancients. ’Tis the fault of our artists to make no use of that [34] proposed to the Parisian artists, [89] viz. to walk, during the summer season, along the Seine, in order to have a full view of the naked parts, from the sixth to the fiftieth year. ”

“ This heighth the history-painter cannot reach, only by a contour above common nature, or a noble expression of the passions: [192] for these are requisite in a good portrait-painter, who is able to execute them without diminishing the likeness of his model. They are but imitation, only prudently managed. The heads of Vandyke are charged with too exact an observation of nature; an exactness that would be faulty in a history-piece.
Truth, lovely as it is in itself, charms more, penetrates deeper, when invested with fiction: fable, in its strictest sense, is the delight of childhood ”

“ Psyche, or, if you will, the Queen of Sheba:—’twas a pity there was no other Psyche to be found, but that dangerous one of Raphael. Most of the late great statues of the saints, in St. Peter’s at Rome, are of the same stuff—the block at 500 Roman crowns from the quarry.
The second characteristic of works of art is Beauty. The highest object of meditation for man is man, and for the artist there is none above his own frame. ”

“ When Phidias first added a tortoise [289] to his Venus, ’tis likely that few were acquainted with his design in it, and bold was the artist who first dared to fetter her: time, however, made the meaning as clear as the figures themselves. Allegory, as Plato says [290] of poetry in general, has something enigmatick in itself, and is not calculated for the bulk of mankind. And should the painter, from the fear of being obscure, adapt his performance to the capacity of those, who look upon a picture as upon a tumultuous mob, he might as well check every new and extraordinary idea. ”

“ Winchester (19) , an ancient city of Hampshire, and the county town, 60 m. SW. of London, on the right bank of the Itchen; is a cathedral city, with a noted large public school; was at one time the capital of England; the cathedral dates from the 11th century, but it has subsequently undergone considerable extensions and alterations; the school was founded by William of Wykeham in 1387.
Winckelmann, Johann Joachim, great art critic, born at Stendal, in Prussian Saxony, of poor parents ”

“ VII. Even those motions of the soul, which otherwise seem opposite to each other, mingle here with peaceful harmony; a timid red spreading over his sickly face, announces health, like the faint glimmerings of the morn, which, though veiled by night, announce the day, and even a bright one.
The genius and taste of the artist shines forth in every part of his work: even the vases are copied from the best antique ones; the table before the bed, is, like Homer’s, of ivory.
The distances behind the figures represent a magnificent Greek building, whose decorations seem allegorical. ”

“ Patience, or rather a longing earnest desire [270] , represented by a female figure, with folded hands, gazing on a watch, is a very good image of the lower class. It must indeed be owned, that the inventors of the most picturesque allegories have contented themselves with the remains of antiquity; none having been authorised to establish [219] images of their own fancy, for the general imitation of the artists. Neither has any attempt of latter times deferred the honour: for in the whole Iconology of Ripa, of two or three that are tolerable ones,
Nantes in gurgite vasto ”

“ Beauty consists in the harmony of the various parts of an individual. This is the philosopher’s stone, which all artists must search for, though a few only find it: ’tis nonsense to him, who could not have formed the idea out of himself. ”

“ Myriads, you say, the bulk of mankind, have not even the least notion of Grace—but what do they know of beauty, taste, generosity, or all the higher luxuries of the soul? These flowers of the human mind were not intended for universal growth, though their seeds lie in every breast.
Grace, in works of art, concerns the human figure only; it modifies the attitude and countenance, dress and drapery. ”

“ Their imitation discovering in the one every beauty diffused through Nature, shewing in the other the pitch to which the most perfect Nature can elevate herself, when soaring above the senses, will quicken the genius of the artist, and shorten his discipleship: he will learn to think and draw with confidence, seeing here the fixed limits of human and divine beauty.
Building on this ground, his hand and senses directed by the Greek rule of beauty, the modern artist goes on the surest way to the imitation of Nature. ”

“ To work curiously, and with unnecessary refinements, is as little the mark of a great artist, as to write learnedly is that of a great author. An image anxiously finished, in every minute trifle, may be fitly compared to a treatise crammed with quotations of books, that perhaps were never read. Remember this, and you will not be amazed at the laurel leaves of Bernini’s Apollo and Daphne, nor at the net held by Adams’s statue of water at Potzdam: you will only be convinced that workmanship is not the standard which distinguishes the antique from the modern. ”

“ Let any one, sagacious enough to pierce into the depths of art, compare the whole system of the Greek figures with that of the moderns, by which, as they say, nature alone is imitated; good heaven! what a number of neglected beauties will he not discover! ”

“ The judicious artist falls asleep over a Daphne and Apollo, a Proserpine carried off by Pluto, an Europa, &c. he wishes for occasions to shew himself a poet, to produce significant images, to paint Allegory.
Painting goes beyond the senses: there is its most elevated pitch, to which the Greeks strove to raise themselves, as their writings evince. Parrhasius, like Aristides, a painter of the soul, was able to express the character even of a whole people: he painted the Athenians as mild as cruel, as fickle as steady, as brave as timid. ”

“ It is not to be denied, that the too close imitation of antiquity is very often apt to lead us to a certain barrenness, unknown to those who imitate nature: various herself, nature teaches variety, and no votary of her’s can be charged with a sameness: whereas Guido, Le Brun, and some other votaries of antiquity, repeated the same face in many of their works. A certain ideal beauty was become so familiar to them, as to slide into their figures even against their will. ”

“ Contrast is the darling of their ideas; in it they fancy every perfection. They fill their performances with comet-like excentric souls, despising every thing but an Ajax or a Capaneus.
Arts have their infancy as well as men; they begin, as well as the artist, with froth and bombast: in such buskins the muse of Æschilus stalks, and part of the diction in his Agamemnon is more loaded with hyperboles than all Heraclitus’s nonsense. Perhaps the primitive Greek painters drew in the same manner that their first good tragedian thought in. ”

“ Be attentive to discover whether an artist had ideas of his own, or only copied those of others; whether he knew the chief aim of all art, Beauty, or blundered through the dirt of vulgar forms; whether he performed like a man, or played only like a child. ”

“ If it be not a contradiction to stretch the limits of painting, as far as those of poetry, [191] and consequently, to allow the painter the same ability of elevating himself to the pitch of the poet as the musician enjoys; it is clear that history, though the sublimest branch of painting, cannot raise itself to the heighths of tragick or epick poetry, by imitation alone. ”

“ Two of the most beautiful youthful heads are a Minerva of Aspasius, now at Vienna, and a young Hercules in the Museum of the late Baron Stosch, at Florence.
But let no man, who has not formed his taste upon antiquity, take it into his head to act the connoisseur of beauty: his ideas must be a parcel of whims. Of modern beauties I know none that could vie with the Greek female dancer of Mr. Mengs, big as life, painted in Crayons on wood, for the Marquis Croimare at Paris, or with his Apollo amidst the muses, in the Villa Albano, to whom that of Guido in the Aurora, compared, is but a mortal. ”