In fact Winckelmann himself freely conceded the executive weakness of the Apollo: the sculptor of the Laocoön must, Winckelmann insisted, ‘have been a far more skilful and complete artist than it was requisite for the sculptor of the Apollo to be’.

As we have seen, he emphasized the virtuosic technique used for the surface
finish of the Laocoön, but like Clark in the twentieth century he did not
find the texture and detail of the Apollo equally fine.
But for Winckelmann beauty is not synonymous with the material
characteristics of the object, as it often became in the modernist criticism
of the twentieth century.
Indeed, Winckelmann’s descriptions of the Apollo tend to dematerialize
it, to leave behind its physical existence and to contemplate what
Clark calls the sculpture’s ‘idea’ (as distinct from its ‘execution’). Moreover
he invites us to follow him:

Let thy spirit penetrate into the kingdom of incorporeal beauties, and strive to become a creator of a heavenly nature, in order that thy mind may be filled with beauties that are elevated above nature; for there is nothing mortal here. . . . Neither blood-vessels nor sinews heat and stir this body, but a heavenly essence, diffusing itself like a gentle stream, seems to fill the whole
contour of the figure.

Winckelmann has been faithful to his own rule, not turning back until
he has found beauty. Where Clark would stop at the slick, mechanical
character of the copyist’s execution, Winckelmann sees beyond the
immediate surface texture. And as he looks, he responds corporeally:
‘In the presence of this miracle of art I forget all else, and I myself take
a lofty position for the purpose of looking upon it in a worthy manner.’
The moral effect of the Laocoön had been to make Winckelmann conscious
of his own weakness and thus desirous of self-improvement (‘we
wish that we could bear misery like this great man’). The Apollo produces
a headier exaltation, so that the viewer’s very body seems to
expand in emulation of the statue. As he goes on looking, Winckelmann
becomes in imagination one of the ancient oracles or priestesses,
inspired by the god Apollo:
My breast seems to enlarge and swell with reverence, like the breasts of those
who were filled with the spirit of prophecy, and I feel myself transported to
Delos and into the Lycaean groves—places which Apollo honored by his presence,— for my image seems to receive life and motion, like the beautiful
creation of Pygmalion.
The final reference is to another ancient myth—that of the sculptor
who made a statue so beautiful that he fell in love with it; by the grace
of Venus (goddess of both beauty and love) Pygmalion’s statue was
brought to life. The aesthetic encounter as Winckelmann
imagines it is reciprocal, making the marble statue seem to come alive
at the same time as it increases the viewer’s sense of vitality. Such experiences as the latter are commonly described in clichés—powerful
works of art are said to make the pulse race, the heart beat faster, the
hairs of the neck tingle. What Winckelmann describes is like this, but
far from being conventionalized it is adapted to the particular experience
of contemplating the Apollo.
Winckelmann’s corporeal response can also be read as an erotic
experience; the Apollo conjures feelings of tumescence and of rising
excitement or exhilaration. This is a homoerotic encounter, one in
which similarity between the viewer-lover and the beloved statue is
crucial; in the consummation of the aesthetic encounter viewer and
statue become identified with one another (the description may also
imply the possibility of shifting genders, when Winckelmann imagines
himself as one of Apollo’s prophetesses and invokes the female
statue of Pygmalion). In an essay of 1805, Goethe speaks frankly of  Winckelmann’s passionate friendships with men, which he sees as
crucial to the older writer’s aesthetic sensibility.21 Subsequently Winckelmann’s
homosexuality has become inseparable from his fame, for
instance in the frequent assumption that the strange event of his
murder, in Trieste in 1768, must have had a homosexual or homophobic
motive (although there is no evidence that the murder was anything
more than a robbery that turned tragically to violence). Recent scholars
have dwelt more positively on the homoerotic resonances of Winckelmann’s
writing, and rightly so: Winckelmann initiated a practice of
homoerotic art criticism of superb quality in its own right, and which
was inspirational for later critics such as Walter Pater.

Nonetheless, there is a danger in assuming that Winckelmann’s
response to the beautiful can be explained away as the effect of his
homosexuality. The sensual element in Winckelmann’s response to the
beautiful cannot be reduced to an expression of desire for the sculptured
male body. Rather, it permeates his descriptions, for instance of
the texture of chiselled marble, of the fall of sculptured draperies, and
even of female figures. He writes of the Venus de’Medici [12], then the
most famous ancient female nude:
The Medicean Venus . . . resembles a rose which, after a lovely dawn, unfolds its leaves to the rising sun; resembles one who is passing from an age which is hard and somewhat harsh—like fruits before their perfect ripeness—into another, in which all the vessels of the animal system are beginning to dilate, and the breasts to enlarge, as her bosom indicates. . . . The attitude brings before my imagination that Laïs who instructed Apelles in love. Methinks I see her, as when, for the first time, she stood naked before the artist’s eyes.
Even without the final reference to Laïs, a famous courtesan of antiquity,
the passage clearly involves fantasies of sexual awakening,
expressed for instance in the image of the opening rose; the flower—
the rose in particular—would soon and lastingly become the most
common and efficient single symbol for pure beauty. Thus the rose,
like the sea images Winckelmann used more frequently in descriptions
of male figures, may be read either as a sexual image or as an aesthetic
one—indeed, the two cannot easily be distinguished.
Passages such as that on the Venus de’Medici, as well as that on the
Apollo Belvedere, raise urgent questions about the relationship between
the beautiful and the erotic—questions which, as we shall see, have
remained central to both aesthetic thought and art practice ever since.
It would be easy enough to resolve them by collapsing the beautiful
into the erotic. Thus in Winckelmann’s case it is tempting to avoid
difficulties by seeing his love of the beautiful simply as a disguised or
sublimated form of erotic attraction to young men. Yet that would not
only reinforce the stereotype, ingrained in modern western societies, that presumes some innate affinity between homosexual desire and
love of art; it would also reduce the theoretical question of the beautiful
to mere personal preference, something about which people of different
genders or sexualities would be unable to share ideas or opinions.
Winckelmann’s writings, however powerful their homoerotic resonances,
cannot be dismissed as merely the fantasies of an eighteenthcentury
white European homosexual.

One of their favorite composers was André Grétry, a master of eighteenth-century opéra comique whose works combined the melodic grace of Italian opera with the dramatic interest of the French.
On one occasion Vigée Le Brun unexpectedly missed an appointment
for a sitting; pregnant at the time, she felt too ill to make the trip to Versailles. The following day she hurried to Versailles to ofer her apologies. The queen did not expect her and was finishing her toilette before taking a ride in her carriage. Upon learning that her portraitist had come to make an appointment for another day, she readily received her and, after gently chiding her, gave orders to cancel her promenade for a sitting: “I remember that in my eagerness to respond to this kindness, I seized my paintbox with such a rush that it spilled; my brushes
fell on the floor; I kneeled down . . . ‘Leave everything,’ said the Queen,
‘You are too advanced in your pregnancy to bend down.’ And she then
proceeded to pick up everything herself ”.
Gradually Vigée Le Brun became the queen’s favorite artist and
portraitiste en titre, and in this capacity she was able to
exercise increasing freedom in her style of portraiture. For instance, the
1783 portrait known as Marie-Antoinette “en gaule”  is a closeup
and intimate three-quarter-length portrait of an attractive young
woman wearing an informal white muslin dress and a broad-rimmed,
plumed hat. She is holding a rose in her left hand. When exhibited in
the Salon the portrait provoked unflattering comments, and wagging
tongues maliciously spread the rumor that the queen had had herself
painted in her nightgown.

Rose Bertin, the queen’s dressmaker, had urged her to give up the
sti¤ formal court dress in favor of loose-fitting, simple gowns of white
cotton or muslin, and the queen was eager to give up the enormous
hooped skirts and the elaborately structured coi¤ures. She banished
them from the court, except for special occasions. Vigée Le Brun, for
her part, eagerly welcomed this opportunity to represent the queen not
merely as an impersonal symbol of royalty, but as a woman in all her
appealing and vulnerable femininity. This unexpectedly unconventional
representation of the queen of France was not well received, and it provoked
something of a scandal and even contributed to her growing
unpopularity and to the spreading of malicious gossip about her moral
character.
In Souvenirs Vigée Le Brun presents a striking portrait of the queen
in her prime. She describes her as tall and admirably well proportioned,
with a natural majesty in her demeanor: “Her features were not regular;
she had inherited from her family a narrow oval face peculiar to the
Austrian nation. She had rather small eyes bluish in tinge; her gaze was
both witty and gentle, her nose fine and pretty, and her mouth not too
large, although her lips were a bit too full. But what is most remarkable
in her face is her complexion. I have never seen anything so brilliant, and
brilliant is the right word, for her skin was so transparent that it did not
catch any shadow. As a result, I could never render its e¤ect satisfactorily.
Colors failed me to paint this freshness, these unbelievably subtle
tones that I have never found in any other woman”.
Vigée Le Brun was indeed proud of the close relationship she was
able to establish with the queen, and her intention was doubtless to
demonstrate the fact that an absolute monarch could properly honor
and further the career of an artist, a tradition going back to the Italian
Renaissance. What was unusual in this case was that the relationship
was between two women. In spite of their very disparate social situations,
they shared mutual respect and sympathy and probably also a common sense of frustration as unhappily married women and as targets
of increasingly vicious calumnies, one as a foreigner — l’Autrichienne
(the Austrian woman) — and the other as a woman artist intent on making
a name for herself in a world overwhelmingly dominated by men.
Indeed their friendly relationship fed the prevalent malicious rumors
about the queen’s purported promiscuity, questionable sexuality, and
lesbian tendencies. That one of her favorite and intimate companions
was the lovely Duchess Yolande de Polignac greatly contributed
to these rumors.
As for the painter’s attachment to her royal subject, it remained
fiercely loyal, especially after Marie-Antoinette’s cruel death. In her
memoir Vigée Le Brun is obviously intent on rehabilitating the queen’s
reputation by recounting several anecdotes intended to underscore her
kindly, generous nature and the goodness of her heart, especially in her
dealings with ordinary people, as when she made sure that her daughter,
Marie-Thérèse Charlotte de France, then aged six, properly honored a
little peasant girl whom she had invited to dinner by serving her first.
Vigée Le Brun was commissioned to paint a large number of portraits
of Marie-Antoinette, both formal and informal. In each case she
was consistently able to convey a sympathetic, vivid representation of a
queen as a sensitive, thoughtful young woman. Even in more sumptuous,
regal portraits, such as the Marie-Antoinette “en robe de velours bleu” , she is at once a figure of quiet selfconfident authority and of dignified femininity. She is seated holding a book in her left hand, indicating her serious interests, and she lightly rests her right hand on a table bearing a vase of flowers. Her elaborate headdress is topped with ornamental plumes. The composition has a baroque, quasi-theatrical element to it, with its background of column
and drapery.

Yet the personality of the queen strongly dominates the composition.  In the famous Marie-Antoinette and Her Children, the queen is represented as a contented mother surrounded by her brood.
The composition was probably meant partially to rehabilitate Marie-
Antoinette’s tarnished image and help ward of the growing public animosity
directed at her. More importantly, it constitutes a translation in
pictorial terms of a moral and bourgeois ideal of motherhood and family
values propounded by such Enlightenment philosophes as Diderot and
Rousseau. Greuze, one of Vigée Le Brun’s mentors and supporters, had
for his part achieved great success with compositions depicting endearing
or dramatic family scenes.
In Marie-Antoinette and Her Children, Vigée Le Brun is intent on
conveying a political message by integrating this moralistic, bourgeois
ideal and family values into the context of absolute monarchy. The queen
is shown seated, gently cradling in her arms her youngest child, Louis-
Charles, Duc de Normandie, who, after his father was guillotined, became
known as Louis XVII and died under mysterious circumstances.
Standing next to their mother are, to her right, Marie-Thérèse, also
known as Madame Royale, and, to the queen’s left, Louis-Joseph, the
Dauphin, pointing at an empty cradle, a reference to Princess Sophie,
who had died shortly after her birth in 1786.
Between May and June of 1781 Vigée Le Brun accompanied her
husband on a business tour of Flanders and Holland. In addition to being
introduced to members of the high society of Brussels and viewing
some superb art collections, notably that of Charles-Joseph de Ligne,
French aristocrat, soldier, and man of letters who graciously hosted the
couple in his superb estate of Beloeil, she was especially impressed by
the magnificent Van Dycks and, above all, by the Rubens masterpieces
in Flemish churches, galleries, and private collections.
In Antwerp she came upon Rubens’s masterful portrait of his sisterin-
law, Susanna Lunden, the older sister of Hélène Fourment, who became
the painter’s second wife in 1630.

The portrait produced such an impact on her that, while still in Brussels, she
painted a self-portrait largely inspired by this composition (I, 34). It is
known as Self-Portrait with a Straw Hat.
Vigée Le Brun’s self-portrait is a worthy homage to Rubens’s brilliant
virtuosity as a colorist, and it strove to achieve similar effects of
light and color. As in the Rubens painting, the setting is out of doors,
enabling the artist to depict natural lighting, so that even the shadow of
the subject’s plumed hat barely affects the brightness of her skin. And in
her portrait there is a real chapeau de paille (straw hat), unlike Rubens’s
subject, whose hat was actually of beaver felt.

To the dashing ostrich feather the artist added a wreath of freshly picked rustic flowers. And where Susanna Lunden peers at us in a coyly indirect fashion, Vigée Le Brun directly meets our gaze with self-assurance, and her lips are partly open in an inviting smile. Unlike Rubens’s subject, whose breasts are pushed high and close together by a tight corset, Vigée Le Brun
displays a low and free décolletage. Finally, while Lunden keeps her
arms and hands demurely and idly crossed above her waist, Vigée Le
Brun extends her right hand in an open, welcoming gesture, while her
left hand firmly grips a palette and brushes, a proud and self-confident
proclamation of herself as both subject and artist.
In her memoir Vigée Le Brun notes with undisguised satisfaction
that her Self-Portrait in a Straw Hat was largely instrumental in her election
to the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture in 1783. She
emphasizes the fact that the initiative did not come from her but rather
from one of her mentors, the painter Joseph Vernet. This was
indeed a bold move, since women had never achieved this distinction.
But by then she strongly felt that she had earned this right, and her
goal was to achieve membership, not merely as portraitist, traditionally
viewed as a minor and inferior genre in the classical academic hierarchy,
but as a full-fledged history painter.
But if Vigée Le Brun had supporters among painters, she also had powerful enemies. One of the most vocal adversaries and fiercest
opponents to her election was Jean-Baptiste Pierre, now largely and
justifiably forgotten but then an influential and successful history painter
who cumulated various official functions, notably as Professor at the
Royal Academy and First Painter of the king. To be sure, the authoritarian
Pierre had his own critics, notably Diderot, who looked upon him as
the quintessential court painter who made the most of his limited talent
and lack of originality by skillfully exploiting an ability to treat and at
times plagiarize historical and religious themes. In fact, Diderot took a
mischievous pleasure in repeatedly ridiculing Pierre in his Salons.
For an exceptionally talented painter like Vigée Le Brun, election to
the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture was a primary goal, for
among other privileges it would give her the right to exhibit her paintings
in the biennial Salon at the Louvre. Yet, the Académie was most
reluctant to accept women painters as members, and to relent would be
an exception to the rule. Furthermore, by tradition and law Academicians
did not engage in art-related commerce, and she could therefore
be barred from the Académie as the wife of an art dealer.
As a reception piece Vigée Le Brun submitted Peace Bringing Back
Abundance, painted in 1780, in order to demonstrate that she was fully
capable of executing this kind of allegorical painting with brilliance and
brio, and therefore that she had earned the credentials as a full-fledged
history painter and not merely as a portraitist. In spite of its traditional
symbolism, the dynamic composition has an all-embracing sweep,
and the two attractive female figures, representing peace and abundance,
respectively, are linked in a common vigorous upward motion, with the
figure of peace gently guiding and protecting peace.
On May 31, 1783, Vigée Le Brun was accorded full membership,
thanks largely to the direct intervention of Marie-Antoinette. In Souve -
nirs she minimizes the queen’s role, although she diplomatically acknowledges that both “the King and Queen had been good enough to wish to see me enter the Academy” . Her uncanny combination
of exceptional talent and astuteness had finally paid of. She had furthermore
adroitly manipulated royal patronage by paying strict adherence to
moral propriety, a timely strategy in view of Marie-Antoinette’s already
badly tainted reputation.
All the elaborate precautions Vigée Le Brun took to protect her own
public image, however, did not prevent scandalmongers from exploiting
her connection with the great and powerful. One of the malicious
rumors was that she had a sexual relationship with Count Charles-
Alexandre de Calonne, Louis XVI’s finance minister from 1783 until

1787, whose portrait she painted in 1784  and whose collection of French and Dutch masters had been largely acquired through the services of the artist’s husband-dealer.

Vigée Le Brun consistently and vigorously denied this rumor, insisting that she as an artist and Calonne as a politician had little in common and no reason for mutual attraction, and furthermore, that she hardly knew him personally. Calonne was a very busy man, and sittings for his portrait had to be shortened. Whether her protestations are entirely truthful is impossible
to ascertain. What can reasonably be assumed is that her overriding
passion throughout her life was her calling as an artist, and this was
most probably the case when, as an ambitious young painter, she was
struggling mightily and pouring all her energies into asserting herself
as a painter of the first rank.
As for Calonne, he was dismissed in 1787, for he had not only failed
in his controversial attempt to deal with the huge public debt and deteriorating financial situation by adopting a spending policy that was followed by a brief period of prosperity before a ruinous collapse, he was
also accused of misusing public money on a grand scale. Not too surprisingly,
after 1789 he was looked upon as one of the principal evildoers
of the Old Regime.
Be that as it may, Vigée Le Brun’s portrait of Calonne is a masterful
example of the o‹cial court portrait, or portrait d’apparat, which she
never theless succeeded in humanizing. The handsome,
youthful minister, bewigged and elegantly attired in black satin, poses
seated at his working desk, holding a document in his left hand and facing
us with a quiet look of authority and self-confidence.
Yet another malicious rumor that circulated was specifically intended
to damage her reputation as an artist: she was accused of not
being the actual author of the paintings attributed to her. Rather, she
allegedly received considerable help in the execution of her portraits
from more experienced male painters, notably from a respectable history
painter, François-Guillaume Ménageot. Unfortunately for Vigée Le Brun, Ména geot happened to reside in the same house on the rue de
Cléry where she and her husband also lived.
By an interesting coincidence, Vigée Le Brun’s admission to the
Académie occurred simultaneously with that of another woman artist,
Adélaïde Labille-Guiard (1749 – 1803).Labille-Guiard had also
achieved renown as a portraitist of exceptional talent. Like Vigée Le
Brun, she, too, was the target of libelous attacks and vicious accusations,
notably that she passed o¤ as her own paintings those by François-
André Vincent, a history painter who happened to be her friend and
mentor and, eventually, her second husband.
Labille-Guiard had less facility and panache than Vigée Le Brun.
Her portraits are serious, sober, straightforward representations of their
subjects. Her color scheme is also more muted and less brilliant than that
of Vigée Le Brun. She did not idealize or flatter her subjects, who are
represented in a straightforward, uncompromising way. A good case in
point is her 1782 Self-Portrait, which, perhaps not coincidentally, was
hung next to Vigée Le Brun’s glamorous Self-Portrait in a Straw Hat at
the Salon de la Correspondance.
The two self-portraits are an interesting study in subtly contrasting
styles. Both self-portraits represent attractive young women artists holding
a palette and brushes in their left hand and facing the onlooker with
an air of quiet self-confidence. But whereas Labille-Guiard strikes a
generally demure, self-contained, and modest post, Vigée Le Brun is
far more assertive in the way she boldly asserts her femininity in her
frontal pose and boldly exposed décolletage.
Although Labille-Guiard eventually became the o‹cial portraitist
of Louis XVI’s aunts, Madame Victoire and Madame Adélaïde, this
could hardly compete with Vigée Le Brun’s spectacular success as
o‹cial portraitist of Marie-Antoinette. When both women were simultaneously elected to the Académie Royale, yet another rumor was widely circulated that, whereas Vigée Le Brun owed her election primarily to the powerful influence of Marie-Antoinette, Labille-Guiard made it
strictly on her own.
The two women ultimately came to be viewed as rivals. Vigée Le
Brun was doubtless the more fashionable painter, yet she was also the
one embroiled in controversy because of her connection with Marie-
Antoinette. Labille-Guiard never even came close to achieving Vigée Le
Brun’s celebrity and notoriety. Although gossips eagerly exploited the
rivalry, there is no evidence of personal animosity. Still, Le Brun’s remark
about some artists who “would not forgive me for being the fashion
and selling my pictures at better prices than theirs”  might be an
indirect reference. Their destinies also took very divergent paths during
the Revolution. Whereas Vigée Le Brun opted for exile, Labille-Guiard
stayed in Paris and readily espoused the revolutionary ideology.

I. Natural Beauty
Good  taste

The taste which the Greeks exhibited in their works of art was unique
and has seldom been taken far from its source without loss. Under more distant skies it found tardy recognition and without a doubt was completely
unknown in the northern zones during a time when painting and sculpture,
of which the Greeks are the greatest teachers, found few admirers. Th is was
a time when the most valuable works of Correggio were used to cover the
windows of the royal stables in Stockholm.

One has to admit that the reign of the great August3 was the happy period
during which the arts were introduced into Saxony as a foreign element.
Under his successor, the German Titus, they became firmly established in
this country, and with their help good taste is now becoming common.
An eternal monument to the greatness of this monarch is that he furthered
good taste by collecting and publicly displaying the greatest treasures
from Italy and the very best paintings that other countries have produced.
His eagerness to perpetuate the arts did not diminish until authentic works
of Greek masters and indeed those of the highest quality were available for
artists to imitate. Th e purest sources of art have been opened, and fortunate is the person who discovers and partakes of them. Th is search means going to Athens; and Dresden will from now on be an Athens for artists.

The only way for us to become great or, if this be possible, inimitable, is
to imitate the ancients. What someone once said of Homer—that to understand him well means to admire him—is also true for the art works of the ancients, especially the Greeks. One must become as familiar with them
as with a friend in order to find their statue of Laocoon4 just as inimitable
as Homer. In such close acquaintance one learns to judge as Nicomachus
judged Zeuxis’ Helena: ‘Behold her with my eyes’, he said to an ignorant
person who found fault with this work of art, ‘and she will appear a goddess to you.’

With such eyes did Michelangelo, Raphael, and Poussin see the works of
the ancients. They partook of good taste at its source, and Raphael did this
in the very land where it had begun. We know that he sent young artists to
Greece in order to sketch for him the relics of antiquity.
Th e relationship between an ancient Roman statue and a Greek original
will generally be similar to that seen in Virgil’s imitation of Homer’s Nausicaa,
in which he compares Dido and her followers to Diana in the midst of her
Oreads.

Laocoon was for the artist of old Rome just what he is for us—the demonstration of Polyclitus’ rules, the perfect rules of art.
I need not remind the reader that certain negligences can be discovered
in even the most famous works of Greek artists. Examples are the dolphin
which was added to the Medicean Venus  together with the playing children;
and the work of Dioscorides, except the main fi gure, in his cameo of
Diomedes  with the Palladium. It is well known that the workmanship on
the reverse of the fi nest coins of the kings of Syria and Egypt rarely equals
that of the heads of these kings portrayed on the obverse. But great artists
are wise even in their faults. They cannot err without teaching. One should
observe their works as Lucian would have us observe the Jupiter of Phidias:
as Jupiter himself, not his footstool.

In the masterpieces of Greek art, connoisseurs and imitators find not only
nature at its most beautiful but also something beyond nature, namely certain
ideal forms of its beauty, which, as an ancient interpreter of Plato teaches us,
come from images created by the mind alone.

The most beautiful body of one of us would probably no more resemble the
most beautiful Greek body than Iphicles resembled his brother, Hercules.
The first development of the Greeks was influenced by a mild and clear sky;
but the practice of physical exercises from an early age gave this development its noble forms.

Consider, for example, a young Spartan conceived by a hero
and heroine and never confined in swaddling clothes, sleeping on the ground
from the seventh year on and trained from infancy in wrestling and swimming.
Compare this Spartan with a young Sybarite of our time and then
decide which of the two would be chosen by the artist as a model for young
Theseus, Achilles, or even Bacchus. Modelled from the latter it would be a
Theseus fed on roses, while from the former would come a Theseus fed on
flesh, to borrow the terms used by a Greek painter to characterize two different  conceptions of this hero.

The grand games gave every Greek youth a strong incentive for physical exercise, and the laws demanded a ten month preparation period for the Olympic Games, in Elis, at the very place where they were held. The highest prizes were not always won by adults but often by youths, as told in Pindar’s odes.

To resemble the god-like Diagoras was the fondest wish of every young man. Behold the swift Indian who pursues a deer on foot—how briskly his juices must flow, how flexible and quick his nerves and muscles must be, how light the whole structure of his body! Thus did Homer portray his heroes, and his Achilles he chiefly noted as being ‘swift of foot’. These exercises gave the bodies of the Greeks the strong and manly contours which the masters then imparted to their statues without any excess.

IV. Noble Simplicity and Quiet Grandeur

The general and most distinctive characteristics of the Greek masterpieces are, finally, a noble simplicity and quiet grandeur, both in posture and expression. Just as the depths of the sea always remain calm however much the surface may rage, so does the expression of the figures of the Greeks reveal a great and composed soul even in the midst of passion. Such a soul is reflected in the face of Laocoon—and not in the face alone—despite his violent suffering. The pain is revealed in all the muscles and sinews of his body, and we ourselves can almost feel it as we observe the painful contraction of the abdomen alone without regarding the face and other parts of the body. This pain, however, expresses itself with no sign of rage in his face or in his entire bearing. He emits no terrible screams such as Virgil’s Laocoon, for the opening of his mouth does not permit it; it is rather an anxious and troubled sighing as described by Sadoleto. The physical pain and the nobility of soul are distributed with equal strength over the entire body and are, as it were, held in balance with one another. Laocoon suffers, but he suffers like Sophocles’ Philoctetes; his pain touches our very souls, but we wish that we could bear misery like this great man.

The expression of such nobility of soul goes far beyond the depiction of

beautiful nature. The artist had to feel the strength of this spirit in himself and then impart it to his marble. Greece had artists who were at once philosophers, and there was more than one Metrodorus. Wisdom extended its hand to art and imbued its figures with more than common souls.

If the artist had clothed him, as would indeed befit his station as a priest, Laocoon’s pain would have lost half its expression. Bernini even claimed to detect in the rigidity of one of Laocoon’s thighs the first effects of the snake’s venom.

All movements and poses of Greek figures not marked by such traits of

wisdom, but instead by passion and violence, were the result of an error of conception which the ancient artists called parenthyrsos.

The more tranquil the state of the body the more capable it is of portraying the true character of the soul. In all positions too removed from this tranquillity, the soul is not in its most essential condition, but in one that is agitated and forced. A soul is more apparent and distinctive when seen in violent passion, but it is great and noble when seen in a state of unity and calm.

The portrayal of suffering alone in Laocoon would have been parenthyrsos; therefore the artist, in order to unite the distinctive and the noble qualities of soul, showed him in an action that was closest to a state of tranquillity for one in such pain. But in this tranquillity the soul must be distinguished by traits that are uniquely its own and give it a form that is calm and active at the same time, quiet but not indifferent or sluggish. The common taste of artists of today, especially the younger ones, is in complete opposition to this. Nothing gains their approbation but contorted postures and actions in which bold passion prevails. This they call art executed with spirit, or franchezza. Their favorite term is contrapposto, which represents for them the essence of a perfect work of art. In their figures they demand a soul which shoots like a comet out of their midst; they would like every figure to be an Ajax or a Capaneus.

The arts themselves have their infancy as do human beings, and they begin as do youthful artists with a preference for amazement and bombast. Such was the tragic muse of Aeschylus; his hyperbole makes his Agamemnon in part far more obscure than anything that Heraclitus wrote. Perhaps the first Greek painters painted in the same manner that their first good tragedian wrote. Rashness and volatility lead the way in all human actions; steadiness and composure follow last. The latter, however, take time to be discovered and are found only in great matters; strong passions can be of advantage to their students. The wise artist knows how difficult these qualities are to imitate.

ut sibi quivis

Speret idem, sudet multum frustraque laboret

Ausus idem.

(Horace)

La Fage, the great draughtsman, was unable to match the taste of the ancients. His works are so full of movement that the observer’s attention is at the same time attracted and distracted, as at a social gathering where everyone tries to talk at once.

The noble simplicity and quiet grandeur of the Greek statues is also the true hallmark of Greek writings from their best period, the writings of the  Socratian school. And these are the best characteristics of Raphael’s greatness, which he attained through imitation of the Greeks.

So great a soul in so handsome a body as Raphael’s was needed to first feel and to discover in modern times the true character of the ancients. He had, furthermore, the great good fortune to achieve this at an age when ordinary and undeveloped souls are still insensitive to true greatness.

We must approach his works with the true taste of antiquity and with eyes

that have learned to sense these beauties. Then the calm serenity of the main figures in Raphael’s ‘Attila’, which seem lifeless to many, will be for us most significant and noble. The Roman bishop here, who dissuaded the king of the Huns from attacking Rome, does not make the gestures and movements of an orator but is shown rather as a man of dignity whose mere presence calms a violent spirit, as in Virgil’s description:

Tum pietate gravem ac meritis si forte virum quem

Conspexere, silent arrectisque auribus adstant.

(Aen. I)

Full of confidence he faces the raging tyrant, while the two apostles hovering in the clouds are not like avenging angels but, if I may compare the sacred with the profane, like Homer’s Jupiter, who makes Mount Olympus quiver with a blink of his eyes.

Algardi, in his famous representation of this same story in bas-relief on an altar of St Peter’s in Rome, did not give or know how to give the figures of his two apostles the active tranquillity of his great predecessor. There they appeared like messengers of the lord of hosts, but here they are like mortal warriors with human weapons.

How few experts have been able to understand the grandeur of expression which Guido Reni gave his beautiful painting of Archangel Michael in the Church of the Capuchins in Rome. Concha’s St Michael is preferred because his face shows anger and revenge, whereas Guido’s archangel, after casting down the enemy of God and man, hovers over him without bitterness, his expression calm and serene.

Just as calm and serene is the avenging hovering angel with whom the English poet compares the victorious commander at Blenheim as protector

of Britannia. The Royal Gallery of Paintings in Dresden now contains among its treasurers one of Raphael’s best works, as Vasari and others have noted. It is a Madonna and Child with St Sixtus and St Barbara kneeling on each side, and two angels in the foreground. Th is picture was the central altar-piece at the monastery of St Sixtus in Piacenza. Art lovers and connoisseurs went to see this Raphael just as people traveled to Thespiae solely to see Praxiteles’ beautiful statue of Cupid.

Behold this Madonna, her face filled with innocence and extraordinary greatness, in a posture of blissful serenity! It is the same serenity with which the ancients imbued the depictions of their deities. How awesome and noble is her entire contour! The child in her arms is a child elevated above ordinary children; in its face a divine radiance illuminates the innocence of childhood. St Barbara kneels in worshipful stillness at her side, but far beneath the majesty of the main figure—in a humility for which the great master found compensation in the gentle charm of her expression. St Sixtus, kneeling opposite her, is a venerable old man whose features bear witness to his youth devoted to God.

St Barbara’s reverence for the Madonna, which is made more vivid and moving by the manner in which she presses her beautiful hands to her breast, helps to support the gesture which St Sixtus makes with his hand. This gesture of ecstasy was chosen by the artist to add variety to his composition and is more appropriate to masculine strength than to feminine modesty.

Time has, to be sure, robbed this painting of much of its glory, and its color has partially faded, but the soul which the artist breathed into the work of his hands still makes it live.

All those who approach this and other works of Raphael in the hope of finding there the trifling beauties that make the works of Dutch painters so popular: the painstaking diligence of a Netscher or a Dou, the ivory flesh tones of a van der Werff , or the tidy manner of some of Raphael’s countrymen in our times—those, I say, will never find in Raphael the great Raphael.

VI. Painting

Everything that can be said in praise of Greek sculpture should in all likelihood also hold true for Greek painting. But time and human barbarity have robbed us of the means to make sure judgments.

It is conceded only that Greek painters had knowledge of contour and expression; they are given no credit for perspective, composition, or coloring.

This judgment is based partly on bas-reliefs, partly on the paintings of antiquity (one cannot say that they are Greek) discovered in and near Rome, in subterranean vaults of the palaces of Maecenas, of Titus, Trajan, and the Antonini. Of these, barely thirty have been preserved intact, and some only in the form of mosaics.

Turnbull included in his work on ancient paintings a collection of the best-known items, drawn by Camillo Paderni and engraved by Mynde, which  give the magnificent but misused paper of his book its only value. Among them are two copies from originals in the collection of the famous physician Richard Mead of London.

Others have already noted that Poussin made studies of the so-called ‘Aldobrandini Marriage’, that there are drawings by Annibale Carracci of apresumed ‘Marcius Coriolanus’, and that there is a great similarity between the heads of Guido Reni’s fi gures and those of the well-known mosaic ‘The Abduction of Europa’.

If such remnants of frescos provided the only basis for judging the ancient paintings, one might be inclined even to deny that their artists knew contour and expression. We are informed that the paintings with life-sized figures taken, together with the walls, from the theater in Herculaneum give a poor impression of their skills: Theseus as the conqueror of the Minotaur, with the young Athenians embracing his knees and kissing his hands; Flora with Hercules and a faun; an alleged ‘Judgment of the Decemvir Appius Claudius’—all are, according to the testimony of an artist, either mediocre or poor. Not only do most of the faces lack expression but those in the ‘Appius Claudius’ lack even character. But this very fact proves that they are paintings by very mediocre artists; for the knowledge of beautiful proportion, of bodily contour, and expression found in Greek sculptors must also have been possessed by their good painters.

Although the ancient painters deserve recognition of their accomplishments, much credit is also due the moderns. In the science of perspective modern painters are clearly superior despite all learned defense of the ancients. The laws of composition and arrangement were imperfectly known to antiquity as evidenced by bas-reliefs dating from the times when Greek art .flourished in Rome.

As for the use of color, both the accounts of ancient writers and the remains of ancient paintings testify in favor of the moderns.

Various other objects of painting have likewise been raised to a higher

degree of perfection in more modern times, for example, landscapes and animal species. The ancient painters seem not to have been acquainted with more handsome species of animals in other regions, if one may judge from individual cases such as the horse of Marcus Aurelius, the two horses in Monte Cavallo, the horses above the portal of San Marco’s Church in Venice, presumably by Lysippus, or the Farnesian Bull and the other animals of this group.

It should be mentioned in passing that in the portrayal of horses theancients did not observe the diametrical movements of the legs as seen in the Venetian horses and those depicted on old coins. Some modern artists have, in their ignorance, followed their example and have even been defended for doing so.

Our landscapes, especially those of the Dutch, owe their beauty mainly to

the fact that they are painted in oil; their colors are stronger, more lively and vivid. Nature itself, under a thicker and moister atmosphere, has contributed not a little to the growth of this type of art. These and other advantages of modern painters over the ancients deserve to be better demonstrated, with more thorough proof than heretofore.

Elisabeth-Louise Vigée Le Brun was a

Elisabeth-Louise Vigée Le Brun was the daughter of Louis Vigée (1715–67), a pastellist who specialized in portraits. She studied with P. Davesne ( fl 1764–96) and Gabriel Briard (1729–77), and by copying Old Masters. In addition, she received encouragement and advice from Joseph Vernet. By the age of 15 she had already developed a modest clientele for her portraits; on 25 October 1774 she became a member of the Académie de St Luc. On 11 January 1776 she married the art dealer Jean-Baptiste Le Brun; she exhibited her work at the Hôtel de Lubert, their house in Paris, and the salons that she held there provided her with important contacts.The list that Vigée Le Brun kept of her paintings documents the increasingly high social status of her sitters. Her ceremonial portrait of Charles-Henri-Othon, Prince of Nassau (1776; Indianapolis, IN, Mus. A.) employed the traditional appointments, idealized interior setting and elegant stance that had been used by earlier 18th-century portrait painters such as Louis Tocqué to convey the sitter’s nobility. In that same year she received her first royal commissions, portraits of one of the brothers of Louis XVI. A trip to the Netherlands and Flanders in 1781 deepened her admiration for Rubens, whose technical practices she began to emulate, switching from canvas supports to panel and experimenting with a warmer range of colours and the use of multiple, thin layers of transparent or translucent paint. Her Self-portrait in a Straw Hat (1782; priv. col.) was based directly on Rubens’s portrait of Susanna Fourment (‘Le Chapeau de Paille’, c. 1622–5; London, N.G.). In this work Vigée Le Brun introduced a note of informality that she later used to advantage in portraying fashionable aristocratic demeanour, particularly of women. In such works as the Duchesse de Polignac (1783; Waddesdon Manor, Bucks, NT), who is portrayed standing at a piano, and the elegant portrait of two friends, the Marquise de Pezay and the Marquise de Rougé with her Sons, she employed delicately animated poses, expressive faces and fashionable dress to convey the refinement and grace of Ancien Régime society. Through her smooth handling of the paint in areas of drapery she conveyed the substance of different materials without being excessively naturalistic. In contrast, details like lace edging or embroidery were carefully observed, yet loosely painted, adding visual interest to the work. The faces were finely modelled, with vitality imparted to the skin tones through a delicate layering of colour, especially in the shadows. Vigée Le Brun’s contemporaries noted her characteristic preference for striking colour combinations; for example she would accent deep midnight blues in either clothing or background with vermilion or orange areas. In the 1780s she began to employ thin, openly brushed monochromatic backgrounds, similar to those seen in Jacques-Louis David’s portraits from the 1790s, and this novel treatment heightened the vitality of the subjects’ faces. Some of the exoticism of her female sitters derives from the original costumes and headdresses that she herself often designed or concocted (e.g. Catherine, Countess Skavronsky, 1790; Paris, Mus. Jacquemart-André). Vigée Le Brun’s awareness of her female subjects’ affectations, and her ability to flatter them, can be gauged from the contrasting directness and intensity of her portraits of men, such as that of Hubert Robert (1788; Paris, Louvre) or of Alexander Charles Emmanuel de Crussol-Florensac (1787; New York, Met.).

In 1788 Vigée Le Brun was first granted favour and patronage by Marie-Antoinette. Until 1783 she exhibited her work—portraits, self-portraits and allegories of the arts—at the Académie de St Luc and the Salon de la Correspondence, the only venues then available to her. Vernet, whose portrait she painted in 1778 (Paris, Louvre), proposed her admission to the Académie Royale, but Jean-Baptiste Pierre, Premier Peintre du Roi, objected on the grounds that her husband was a dealer; and it was only through royal intervention that she was admitted to membership of the Académie on 31 May 1783, the same day as her rival Adélaïde Labille-Guiard. They filled the two remaining places of the four allotted to women. Vigée Le Brun’s morceau de réception, Peace Bringing Back Plenty (1780; Paris, Louvre) was a history painting, demonstrating her ambition to be considered as one of the highest class of painter. She painted some 30 portraits of Marie-Antoinette, varying in attire and bearing. One of 1783 that portrayed the Queen ‘en gaulle’, in a simple gauzy dress (Darmstadt, Princess von Hessen & bei Rehin priv. col.) was criticized as indecorous, and was replaced during the 1783 Salon by another portrait (untraced) that featured a more formal gown. In 1785 Vigée Le Brun received an official commission for a portrait of Marie-Antoinette and her Children, which was intended to counter the increasing criticism of the Queen as frivolous and wayward; by depicting her surrounded by her affectionate children, Vigée Le Brun portrayed Marie-Antoinette as a devoted, virtuous mother and wife. The painting’s overall pomp and splendour presented a dignified image of Marie-Antoinette as sovereign, in direct contrast to Adolf Ulric Wertmüller’s vacuous image (1785 Salon; Stockholm, Nmus.) of the Queen strolling with her children in the gardens of Versailles. The politically sensitive nature of this image may be gauged from the artist’s decision to withhold the painting from the opening days of the 1787 Salon. For such work she was paid considerably more than her contemporaries, even the history painters, and this ability to command extraordinary fees persisted throughout her career. Until 1791 she exhibited regularly at the annual Salon, and critics were generally complimentary; but because of her association with Marie-Antoinette, she became early in 1789 the victim of a slanderous press campaign. Distressed by these attacks on her private life and by the increasingly violent progress of the Revolution, in October 1789 she left France with Jeanne-Julie-Louise Le Brun (1780–1819), her only child, for what were to be 12 years of exile and travel.

Vigée Le Brun’s first destination was Italy, where she stayed until 1793, moving in court circles in Turin, Rome, and particularly Naples, which was ruled by Ferdinand I (1751–1825), married to Marie-Antoinette’s sister Caroline (1752–1814). There Vigée Le Brun painted portraits of many English tourists, such as Frederick Augustus Hervey, 4th Earl of Bristol . She also visited Florence and Venice. In Florence in 1790 she contributed to the celebrated grand-ducal collection of artists’ self-portraits in the Uffizi a Self-portrait (in situ) that is a quintessential image of a painter at work at an easel, wearing an informal bonnet and holding a palette and a fistful of brushes; at the same time the artist signalled her femininity through the careful depiction of her elaborate ruffled lace collar and the colourful accent of her sash. When this portrait was exhibited in Rome in the same year, it was rapturously received, and earned Vigée Le Brun election to the Accademia di S Luca. In other self-portraits she addressed her role as a tender mother; thus in two portrayals of Madame Vigée Le Brun and her Daughter (1786 and 1789; both Paris, Louvre) she is seen embracing her little girl; in the latter version both are in Grecian dress.

There followed invitations to Vienna (1793–4) and then Prague, Dresden and Berlin. In each city Vigée Le Brun received numerous commissions from a noble clientele. From 1795 to 1801 she lived in St Petersburg except for a five-month stay in Moscow beginning in October 1800. Even though the Empress Catherine II found fault with her work, Vigée Le Brun prospered, painting for members of the imperial family and for the Russian nobility. In 1800 she became an honorary associate of the St Petersburg Academy. During that period she modernized her repertory to include portraits set in romantic landscape, suggesting the pleasure of solitude in natural settings, popularized by the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau; examples of such works are Countess Potocka and Countess Bucquoi . Although many of Vigée Le Brun’s Russian works either repeated or were reminiscent of her earlier compositions—her oeuvre in general being complicated by a large number of copies, replicas and imitations—a number of the portraits displayed a new intensity and spareness very much in keeping with the Romantic era’s emphasis on the individual. In these, solitary figures in relatively modest attire gaze directly at the viewer. Placed against subtly modulated plain backdrops, they convey intelligence or personality. After Vigée Le Brun’s departure from France her name had been placed on the list of émigrés, whose citizenship was thereby revoked and property confiscated. Her husband tried to defend her, publishing in 1793 a pamphlet entitled Précis historique de la vie de la Citoyenne Le Brun, but he was forced to divorce her in 1794, on pain of forfeiting their possessions. In 1799 fellow artists circulated a petition, which was granted the following year, requesting that her name be removed from the list of émigrés. Once her citizenship had been restored, Vigée Le Brun returned to France, initially for a brief period preceded by a six-month stay in Berlin. She spent 1802 in France, working on paintings begun during her Russian period. Saddened by the post-revolutionary atmosphere, she then moved to London (1803–5), where her list of clients for portraits included the poet Lord Byron and the Prince of Wales (later George IV). In the summer of 1805 she returned to France for good, except for brief trips in 1807 and 1808 to Switzerland, where she visited Mme de Staël, whose portrait she painted. After 1809 Vigée Le Brun divided her time between Paris and a country house in Louveciennes, and once more began to hold popular salons; her husband died in 1813 and her daughter in 1819. She continued to paint, though sporadically, sending works to the Salons of 1817 and 1824. In 1829 she produced a short manuscript autobiography for a friend, Princess Natalie Kourakin, and in 1834–5, with the aid of her nieces and friends, she expanded her recollections into Souvenirs.

reference: Kathleen Nicholson

They were educators and  in some way their lives were examples  to the people how to live. On the other side Jean-Jacques Rousseau was telling that people should be return to the primitive. That primitive component can be seen in Neoclassicism as well.

Revolution in 1789 should constitute concept of Liberty , Equality, Fraternity (Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité). Artist find themselves as revolutionaries. They thought that they were creating big style. In the middle of the 19^th century the word Neoclassicism got pejorative connotation indicating imitation, frigidity, style without individualism etc. The word that they were using was risorgimento that is to rise again. This word is later used by Garibaldi.

Neoclassicism brought attack over Rococo art, they thought that Rococo was shameless style, unscrupulous. Esthetic and philosophic statements were changed since Rococo, but that does not mean that Rococo art was vanished in the time when Neoclassicism was dominant. There even was a statement that Rococo was aristocratic style while Neoclassicism was bourgeoisie, but that isn’t true. Neoclassicism critique art that is master’s slave (in their opinion, for example Rococo artist Boucher made that kind of art). Winckelmann said that art must immerse in intellect.

Themes were changed too. Now, artist paints heroic visions, heroes, high ideals etc. Neoclassicism exclude ornament that was most common in Rococo art, they insist in greek and roman shapes, in Naples made pottery  à la grecque, they were reading Homer, Vergil etc. For example we can see that in  Gavin Hamilton paintings such as , Achilles Mourning Patroclus  and The Oath of Brutus, Raphael Mengs painting Ausustus and Cleopatra, David paintings  The Lictors Bring to Brutus the Bodies of His Sons, The Death of Socrates, Oath of the Horatii etc.

First he was studying theology in the University of Halle , but then he bumped in books written by broad-minded English and French writers. He was normally listen Baumgarten’s classes about art, but Baumgarten approach as aesthetic did not satisfied Winckelmann. He thought that Baumgarten’s approach was boring, and empty which art categorize by some ahead composed schema, and not by analyzing.After listening Baumgarten’s  classes he thought that it would be good to study mathematics, medicine and physics.

In 1740s he became librarian with chancellor Ludewik where he gained knowledge about researching humanities, but after that he  once again with the intention of becoming a physician, in 1740 attended medical classes at Jena.   From 1743 to 1748, he was the deputy headmaster of the gymnasium of Seehausen in the Altmark but Winckelmann felt that work with children was not his true calling. In his free time he was reading Homer, Herodotus, Sophocles, Xenophon, Teocrito, Plaut, Propertius, Aristophanes, Euripides etc. Then, he marked his new goal: knowing historical science which resulted by reading French and English history as well as his observations on methods in 18^th century historiography. He was studying Greek, Latin, Hebrew, French, Italian and English language.

Unsatisfied with his job and life he went to Saxonia where he in 1748s began to work in Count Heinrich von Bünau’s library. The library contained some 40,000 volumes. Winckelmann there was reading Pope, Petrarch, Milton etc. In this library he was introduced with new methods of history, but the most impact on him was Voltaire’s book about Louis XVI. This book was innovating in a sense that Voltair did not wrote about wars and politics, but about culture and historical cours and not about historical individuals. Winckelmann’s major duty was to assist von Bünau in writing a book on the Holy Roman Empire and help collect material for it. During this period he made several visits to the collection of antiquities at Dresden, but his description of its best paintings was left unfinished. The treasures there, nevertheless, awakened in Winckelmann an intense interest in art, which was deepened by his association with various artists, particularly the painter Adam Friedrich Oeser  (1717-1799) — Goethe’s future friend and influence — who encouraged Winckelmann in his aesthetic studies. At the same time his friend was painter Riedel who was inspector of Dresden’s gallery.

Winkelman’s friends  were painters who were nucleus of incoming neoclassicism, and especially Raphael Mengs (1728-1779).Winkelmann was writing some texts of major importance for neoclassicism (1755 to 1764).

His first short text was  Gedanken über die Nachahmung der griechischen Werke in Malerei und Bildhauerkunst (Thoughts on the Imitation of Greek Works in Painting and Sculpture). In this text he defined his investigation goal: detecting ancient archetype of art and forming contemporary taste on that foundation.  He was analyzing Greek taste of art and their believes about beauty in literature and arts. In that time he made his famous sentences: “noble simplicity and quiet grandeur” and the definitive assertion, “The one way for us to become great, perhaps inimitable, is by imitating the ancients.” The work was warmly admired not only for the ideas it contained, but for its literary style. It made Winckelmann famous, and was reprinted several times and soon translated into French. In England, Winckelmann’s views stirred discussion in the 1760s and 1770s, although it was limited to artistic circles:Henry Fuseli’s   translation of Reflections on the Painting and Sculpture of the Greeks was published in 1765, but the text did not find enough readers to warrant a second edition.

In 1751, the papal nuncio and Winckelmann’s future employer, Alberico Archinto, visited Nöthnitz, and in 1754 Winckelmann joined the Roman Catholic Church. Goethe concluded that Winckelmann was a pagan, but his conversion ultimately opened the doors of the papal library to him. On the strength of the Gedanken über die Nachahmung der Griechischen Werke, August III, king of Poland and elector of Saxony, granted him a pension of 200 thalers , so that he could continue his studies in Rome.

Winckelmann arrived in Rome in November 1755. Originally, Winckelmann planned to stay in Italy only two years with the help of the grant from Dresden, but the outbreak of the Seven Years War (1756-1763) changed his plans. He was named librarian to Cardinal Passionei  , who was impressed by Winckelmann’s beautiful Greek writing. Winckelmann also became librarian to Chardinal Archinto , and received much kindness from Cardinal Passionei. After their deaths, Winckelmann was hired as librarian in the house of Alessandro Cardinal Albani , who was forming his magnificent collection of antiquities in the villa at Porta Salaria. With the aid of his new friend and lover, the painter Anton Raphael Mengs  (1728-79), with whom he first lived in Rome, Winckelmann devoted himself to the study of Roman antiquities and gradually acquired an unrivalled knowledge of ancient art. Winckelmann’s method of careful observation allowed him to identify Roman copies of Greek art, something that was unusual at that time—Roman culture was considered the ultimate achievement of Antiquity. His friend Mengs became the channel through which Winkelmann’s ideas were realized in art and spread around Europe.

His first task in Rome was to describe the statues in the Cortile del Belvedere  —the Apollo Belvedere the Laocoön , the so-called Antinous, and the Belvedere Torso—which represented to him the “utmost perfection of ancient sculpture.” When he was analyzing the Torso he tried to reconstruct primary look. That made him to question about restoration of art. Then he wrote about problems and different types of art. He paid attention on artist effort and talent, beauty of  art and spectator understanding of art. (in Errinerung über die Betradhtung der Werke der Kunst).

Material reflection of archetype was grazia (Von der Grazie in Werken der Kunst). He was analyzing in which shapes grazia iz shown and in that way he allowed himself to follow one special element in art and his changes through art styles.

In 1764 he wrote Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums (“The History of Ancient Art”). Here he defined his approach to art and divided in two parts: art in wider sense (as appearance in Etruscan art, Egyptian art etc.) and art in relation with external impact (here he analyze only Greek art). With this book he became the first writer on the subject to sort out a proper chronological development.

Winckelmann coditicated aims of epoch to create great art. He applied history method when analyzing ancient art and than divided phases of ancient art: archaic, sublime, epoch of beauty, imitation, decadency.

Ideals of neoclassicism were sculpture of Apollo and Laocoön. Winckelmann stated that of all works of antiquity the statue of Apollo Belvedere is the highest ideal of art. It was the idealized beauty of the nude body. Winkelmann linked nude body with the beneficence of the Greek climate. Height and attitude of Apollo Belvedere suggest god grandeur. Aesthetic pleasure and scholarly erudition expressed by Winckelmann and his contemporaries in their response to ancient sculpture are only part of significance og Greek and Roman art for the 18^th century. Winckelmann has made a passing reference to the use of nude models in modern academies or art schools, and just as the study of nude has been of fundamental importance for the Greek and Roman artist, so it was again with rebirth of classical art.

The Laocoön was as famous as Apollo. The group portraits Laocoön a Trojan prince and priest, together with his two sons who were killed on the beach by serpents that had risen from the sea. The creator of Laocoön avoid exaggeration in both posture and expression and that is what Winckelmann preferred. Here we can see Winckelmann believes when he sad ’noble simplicity and quiet grandeur’ (look at the mouth, muscle, etc.).

Noble simplicity and quiet grandeur were at the heart of Winckelmann’s interpretation of ancient art, and interpretation shared both by other writers and by observes in the second half of 18^th century. These two characteristics were central to Neoclassicism art, most notably in painting, drawing and sculpture.

We can use David Irwin’s  periodization of neoclassicism, which he divided  in three phases:

1.From 1750 to 1790 was the age of the Grand Tour.

2. From 1790 to 1830 Neoclassicism become more influenced by ancient Greece (rather than Rome).

3. Final phase is from 1830.

The first period is marked as Grand Tour. In that time most of the intellectuals were educated. Grand Tour actually is traveling across the Italy. British travelers were predominant, fewer came from France and Germany.  Famous travelers were Robert Adam, who were British architect,  Joseph Addison, the famous essayist, and Lady Anna Miller who was to take a leading part in the social and literary part of Bath. Addison wrote Remarks on Several parts of Italy, and that book found its way into luggage of many travelers.

Travelers  hoped to invest in their future success by gaining knowledge and skills. the aristocracy and  gentry treated their tour as continuation of their education.  Grand Tour was both a real journey and a journey of ideas, therefore travelers were interested in seeing Italian landscapes, classical antiquities, cabinets of curiosities etc.

Grand tour should began at the age of twenty. By that age travelers should gain knowledge in all sorts of educational curriculums.  They mostly visited Florence, Rome and Naples. When Pompeii and  Herculaneum were discovered many travelers went in the bay of Naples.

Travelers mostly visit ruins and marble fragments, they liked Colosseum, roman baths. Even Goethe records walking through ruins in Rome. The Vatican was at the center of any tourist’s site-seeing in Rome, with the St Peter’s church, Sistine chapel. By time, new museums were needed, so, Capitol got new museum as well as Vatican. Museo Pio-Clementino was named after two popes responsible for erecting museum. Vatican collections and so many other private collections were well displayed. Two most famous sculptures in that time were the Apollo Belvedere and Laocoön. Popularity of these two sculptures were due to Winckelmann’s writing about them, so tourist already known about them by engravings and plaster casts.

In that time, from 1750 to 1790, active architect were Ledoux, Boulle, Soufflot in France, Adam in Britain and Piranesi in Italy. History painting were made by Benjamin West, Jacques-Louis David.

The second period saw the neoclassical  style change in character, becoming more austere, influenced by ancient Greece rather than Rome. Neoclassical themes use art as patriotic propaganda of the time of French revolution and Napoleonic period. In that period David made his very important paintings Death of Marat and Death of le Pelletier. They became martyrs of the Revolution.

Among the architects were Soane in Britain and Schinkel in Germany where he created a modern Berlin.  Neoclassicism became influential style in the United States,  together with British colonies in India and Australia.

The third period is from 1830 to the present day. Neoclassicism nevertheless continued to exert in influence. We can now see neoclassicism in Crystal Palace from 1851. and some building erected during the Hitler’s reign, in Japanese architecture etc.