Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-wxhwt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-12T10:42:57.422Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Allusion and ekphrasis in Winckelmann's Paris description of the Apollo Belvedere

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2013

Katherine Harloe
Katherine Harloe
Affiliation:
University of Reading
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

As Vout (2006) has recently reminded us in this journal, Johann Joachim Winckelmann's History of the art of antiquity (Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums, 1st ed. 1764) is widely considered to be a foundational text in the history of art. Advertising itself as the first ‘systematic’ account of ancient art in relation to its geographical, social and political circumstances, Winckelmann filled out the well-known Plinian chronology of artists with a new analysis in terms of a succession of period styles, providing a satisfyingly scientific justification for the preference his contemporaries were beginning to accord to the art of the Greeks. Small wonder then that the book was lauded as a classic as soon as it appeared in Germany and was quickly translated into French and Italian. Nevertheless, it is also hardly surprising that this text, which promised nothing less than a ‘new paradigm’ for the study of antique culture, has always presented problems to its readers. These are partly caused by its magnitude of ambition. Titled, first and foremost, a ‘history’, Winckelmann's magnum opus in fact attempts to be many things: part systematic exploration of the social and physical factors that condition the development of all art; part impassioned disquisition on the essence of beauty; part antiquarian catalogue of the greatest surviving works of Greek and Roman art; part manual of aesthetic taste for aspiring contemporary artists. Few books since Winckelmann's History can have combined bold claims about their importance as historical scholarship with detailed instructions on how to draw a perfectly beautiful face.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Cambridge Classical Journal , Volume 53 , 2007 , pp. 229 - 252
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s). Published online by Cambridge University Press 2007

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Aldrich, K., Fehl, P., and Fehl, R. (1991) ‘Introduction: Franciscus Junius and the defense of art’, in Junius, F., The literature of classical art, 2 vols., Berkeley, 1., xxi–lxxxiii.Google Scholar
Bakker, E. J. (2002) ‘Remembering the god's arrival’, Arethusa 35, 63–81.Google Scholar
Beard, M., Henderson, J. (2001) Classical art: from Greece to Rome, Oxford.Google Scholar
Cameron, A. (1993) The Greek anthology from Meleager to Planudes, Oxford.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clay, J. S. (1997) ‘The Homeric hymns’, in Morris, I., Powell, B. (eds.) A new companion to Homer, Leiden.Google Scholar
Davis, W. (1994) ‘Winckelmann divided: mourning the death of art history’, in Powell, B. (ed.) Gay and lesbian studies in art history, New York, 141–59.Google Scholar
Davis, W. (1996) ‘Winckelmann's “homosexual” teleologies’, in Kampen, N. B. (ed.) Sexuality in ancient art, Cambridge, 262–77.Google Scholar
Décultot, E. (2000) Johann Joachim Winckelmann. Enquête sur la genèse de l'histoire de l'art, Paris.Google Scholar
Donohue, A. A. (1995) ‘Winckelmann's history of art and Polyclitus’, in Moon, W. G. (ed.) Polykleitos, the doryphoros, and tradition, Madison, 327–53.Google Scholar
Eiselein, J. (1965/1829) Johann Winckelmanns sämtliche Werke. Einzige vollständige Ausgabe, 12 vols., Osnabrück.Google Scholar
Elsner, J. (1995) Art and the Roman viewer: the transformation of art from the pagan world to Christianity, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Elsner, J. (2000) ‘Between mimesis and divine power: visuality in the Greco-Roman world’, in Nelson, R. S. (ed.) Visuality before and beyond the Renaissance. Seeing as others saw, Cambridge, 45–69.Google Scholar
Elsner, J. (2002) ‘Introduction: the genres of ekphrasis’, Ramus 31, 1–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Elsner, J. (2004) ‘Seeing and saying: a psychoanalytic account of ekphrasis’, Helios 31, 157–86.Google Scholar
Ettlinger, L. D. (1981) ‘Winckelmann, or marble boys are better’, in Barasch, M. and Sandler, L. Freeman (eds.) Art the ape of nature. Studies in honour of H. W. Janson, New York, 505–11.Google Scholar
Fairbanks, A. (1960/1931) (tr.) Philostratus Imagines; Callistratus Descriptions, Cambridge, MA.Google Scholar
Fowler, D. (1991) ‘Narrate or describe: the problem of ekphrasis’ JRS 81, 25–35.Google Scholar
Goldhill, S. (1994) ‘The naive and knowing eye: ecphrasis and the culture of viewing in the Hellenistic world’, in Goldhill, S., Osborne, R. (eds.) Art and text in ancient Greek culture, Cambridge, 197–223.Google Scholar
Goldhill, S. (2001) ‘The erotic eye: visual stimulation and cultural conflict’, in Goldhill, S., Osborne, R. (ed.) Being Greek under Rome: cultural identity, the Second Sophistic and the development of empire, Cambridge, 154–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heffernan, J. A. W. (1993) Museum of words. The poetics of ekphrasis from Homer to Ashbery, Chicago and London.Google Scholar
Heyne, C. G. (1963/1778). ‘Lobschrift auf Winkeimann’, in Schluz, A. (ed.), Die Kasseler Lobschriften auf Winckelmann, Berlin.Google Scholar
Junius, F. (1638) The painting of ancients, in three books: declaring by historicall observations and examples, the beginning, progresse, and consummation of that most noble art. And how those ancient artificers attained their still so much admired excellencie, London.Google Scholar
Junius, F. (1694) De pictura veterum libri tres, tot in locis emendati, & tarn multis accessionibus aucti, ut plane novi possint videri: accedit Catalogus, adhuc ineditis, architectorum, mechanicorum, sed praecipue pictorum, stutuariorum, caelatorum, tornatorum, aliorumque artificium, & operum quae fecerunt, secundum seriem litterarum digestus, Rotterdam.Google Scholar
Justi, C. (1871) ‘Ein Manuscript über die Statuen in Belvedere’, Preussische Jahrbücher, 28, 581–609.Google Scholar
Kraus, K. (1935) Winckelmann und Homer mit Benutzung der Hamburger Homer-Ausschreibungen Winckelmanns, Berlin.Google Scholar
Mallgrave, H. F. (2006) (tr.) Johann Joachim Winckelmann. History of the art of antiquity, Los Angeles.Google Scholar
Morrison, J. (1996) Winckelmann and the notion of aesthetic education, Oxford.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nelson, R. S. (2000) ‘Descartes' cow and other domestications of the visual’, in (id.) (ed.) Visuality before and beyond the Renaissance. Seeing as others saw, Cambridge, 1–15.Google Scholar
Pommier, E. (1989) ‘Winckelmann et la vision de l'antiquité classique dans la France des Lumières et de la Révolution’, Revue de l'art 83, 9–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Potts, A. (1980) ‘Greek sculpture and Roman copies I: Anton Raphael Mengs and the eighteenth century’, JWCI 43, 150–73.Google Scholar
Potts, A. (1994) Flesh and the ideal. Winckelmann and the origins of art history, New Haven and London.Google Scholar
Prettejohn, E. (2005) Beauty and art, Oxford.Google Scholar
Richardson, J. and J., (1722) An account of the statues, bas-reliefs, drawings and pictures in Italy, France, &c. with remarks, London.Google Scholar
Schadewaldt, W. (1941) Winckelmann und Homer, Leipzig.Google Scholar
Schadewaldt, W. (1968) Winckelmann und Rilke, Zwei Beschreibungen des Apollon, Stuttgart.Google Scholar
Seeba, H. C. (1982) ‘Johann Joachim Winckelmann. Zur Wirkungsgeschichte eines “unhistorischen” Historikers zwischen Ästhetik und Geschichte’, Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte Sonderheft 56, 168–201.Google Scholar
Spence, J. (1747) Polymetis: or, an enquiry concerning the agreement between the works of the Roman poets and the remains of the ancient artists. Being an attempt to illustrate them mutually from one another, London.Google Scholar
Steiner, D. T. (2001) Images in mind. Statues in archaic and classical Greek literature and thought, Princeton and Oxford.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tibal, A. (1911) Inventaire des manuscrits de Winckelmann déposés a la Bibliothèque nationale, Paris.Google Scholar
Vout, C. (2006) ‘Winckelmann and Antinous’, CCJ 52, 149–62.Google Scholar
Vout, C. (2007) Power and eroticism in imperial Rome, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Webb, R. (1999) ‘Ekphrasis ancient and modern: the invention of a genre’, Word and Image 15, 7–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wieland, C. M. (1779) [Editor's note], in Der teutsche Merkur, 249–50.Google Scholar
Winckelmann, J. J. (1829) Johann Winckelmanns Sämtliche Werke. Einzige vollstanäige Ausgabe, Eiselein, J. (ed.), Osnabrück.Google Scholar
Winckelmann, J. J. (1952–1957) Briefe, Rehm, W. (ed.), 4 vols., Berlin.Google Scholar
Winckelmann, J. J. (1964/1764) Geschichte der Kunst des Altertums. Vollständige Ausgabe, Senff, W. (ed.), Weimar.Google Scholar
Winckelmann, J. J. (1968) Kleine Schriften. Vorreden. Entwürfe, Rehm, W. (ed.) (revised edn. 2002), Berlin and New York.Google Scholar
Wolf, F. A. (1969/1805) ‘Winckelmann als Philologe’, in Goethe, J. W. (ed.) Winckelmann und sein Jahrhundert in Briefen und Aufsätzen, Leipzig.Google Scholar
Zanker, G. (2003) Modes of viewing in Hellenistic poetry and art, Madison.Google Scholar
Zeitlin, F. (2001), ‘Visions and revisions of Homer’, in Goldhill, S. (ed.), Being Greek under Rome: cultural identity, the Second Sophistic and the development of empire, Cambridge, 195–266.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zeller, H. (1955) Winckelmanns Beschreibung des Apollo im Belvedere, Zürich.Google Scholar