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Updated: May 13, 2025
The finest specimens of ancient paintings are found in catacombs, the baths, and the ruins of Pompeii. On this subject Winckelmann is the great authority. It would be absurd to claim for the ancients any great attainments in science, such as they made in the field of letters or the realm of art.
It is clear that Goethe alone among the critics of the time understood that Beyle was something more than a novelist, and discerned an uncanny significance in his pages. 'I do not like reading M. de Stendhal, he observed to Winckelmann, 'but I cannot help doing so.
In this sense we can only acknowledge that the ancients were right when they said, with profoundest conviction, that it was a misfortune to die without having seen this great work. For the appreciation of this beauty Winckelmann was by nature fitted.
Notwithstanding all our efforts relative to art and antiquity, we each of us always had Winckelmann before our eyes, whose ability was acknowledged in his country with enthusiasm. We read his writings diligently, and tried to make ourselves acquainted with the circumstances under which he had written the first of them.
Voltaire's impression on Winckelmann was never effaced; and it gave him a consideration for French literature which contrasts with his contempt for the literary products of Germany. German literature transformed, siderealised, as we see it in Goethe, reckons Winckelmann among its initiators.
Such scenes are described by Winckelmann with great relish; they lighten whatever dependence he may feel, and nourish his sense of freedom which was averse to every fetter that might restrain him. Although Winckelmann was very happy in his association with the natives, he suffered all the more annoyance and tribulation from strangers.
Winckelmann was in the highest degree delighted with him, and, whenever he mentioned him, loaded him with the handsomest epithets. The laying out of a park, then unique, the taste for architecture, which Von Erdmannsdorf supported by his activity, every thing spoke in favor of a prince, who, while he was a shining example for the rest, gave promise of a golden age for his servants and subjects.
During a sojourn at Seehausen he made the acquaintance of Winckelmann, whose intimate friend he became, and through whose recommendation he was afterward engaged as tutor of the youngest Count Bünau. He conducted his pupil to Brunswick where the latter studied at the Karolinum.
So, from a few stray antiquarianisms, a few faces cast up sharply from the waves, Winckelmann, as his manner is, divines the temperament of the antique world, and that in which it had delight. It has passed away with that distant age, and we may venture to dwell upon it. What sharpness and reality it has is the sharpness and reality of suddenly arrested life.
Johann Joachim Winckelmann was born at Stendal, in Brandenburg, in the year 1717. The child of a poor tradesman, he passed through many struggles in early youth, the memory of which ever remained in him as a fitful cause of dejection.
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