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It cannot be denied that Winckelmann's change of religion considerably heightens in our imagination the romantic side of his life and being. But to Winckelmann himself the Catholic religion presented nothing attractive. He saw in it only the masquerade dress which he threw around him, and expressed himself bitterly enough about it.
Count Bünau, in his capacity of a private gentleman, needed only to buy one valuable book less in order to open for Winckelmann the road to Rome; as a minister of state he had influence enough to have helped this excellent man out of every difficulty; but he was probably unwilling to lose so capable a servant, or else he had no appreciation of the great service he would have rendered the world by encouraging a gifted man.
But is there any real antagonism between the elements of form and significance, beauty and expressiveness? This question has been debated ever since the time of Winckelmann and Lessing. The controversy over the work of such artists as Wagner, Browning, Whitman, Rodin has turned largely upon it.
When at Rome, we once asked a foreigner, who seemed to be talking somewhat vaguely on the subject, what he understood by the Sublime. His answer was, "Le plus beau"; making it only a matter of degree. Now let us only imagine (if we can) a beautiful earthquake, or a beautiful hurricane. And yet the foreigner is not alone in this. D'Azzara, the biographer of Mengs, speaking of Beauty, talks of "this sublime quality," and in another place, for certain reasons assigned, he says, "The grand style is beautiful." Nay, many writers, otherwise of high authority, seem to have taken the same view; while others who could have had no such notion, having used the words Beauty and the Beautiful in an allegorical or metaphorical sense, have sometimes been misinterpreted literally. Hence Winckelmann reproaches Michael Angelo for his continual talk about Beauty, when he showed nothing of it in his works. But it is very evident that the Bell
There is no congruity when even great people set about doing pseudo-antique sculpture in Canova-Thorwaldsen fashion because Winckelmann and Goethe have made antique sculpture fashionable; there is no congruity when people set to building pseudo-Gothic in obedience to the romantic movement and to Ruskin.
The Abbe Winckelmann came in the afternoon and informed me that I was fortunate enough to be high in favour with his cardinal, and that the book I had sent him was very valuable; it was a rare work, and in much better condition than the Vatican copy. "I am commissioned to pay you for it." "I have told his eminence that it was a present."
The latter, whose own great talent was enthralled by the ancient works of art and especially by such as were beautiful, immediately introduced his friend to the most excellent a fact worthy of our attention. Here Winckelmann learned to recognize beauty of form and its treatment, and was immediately inspired to undertake a treatise, Concerning the Taste of the Greek Artists.
Lessing, in the Laocoon, has theorised finely on the relation of poetry to sculpture; and philosophy can give us theoretical reasons why not poetry but sculpture should be the most sincere and exact expression of the Greek ideal. By a happy, unperplexed dexterity, Winckelmann solves the question in the concrete.
In addition to this Winckelmann must have felt that a man, in order to be a Roman in Rome, in order to identify himself with the life there, and to enjoy confidential association, must necessarily profess the religion of his associates, must yield to their faith, and accommodate himself to their usages.
For as a healthy tissue resists illness and is speedily restored after every attack, so the wholesome mind of such natures quickly and easily recovers from internal and external misfortune. Such an antique nature, in so far as one can make this statement of any of our contemporaries, was reincarnated in Winckelmann.
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