art history and the enlightenment

WINCKELMANN, ART HISTORY AND THE
ENLIGHTENMENT
The origins of art history with claims to being an empirical and
rational discipline can be dated to the eighteenth century. Like
archaeology, art history arose in part from the cultural politics of
the Enlightenment and antiquarian interests promoted by the Grand
Tour. The many objets d’art and, in some cases, fragments of entire
classical ruins such as the Athenian Parthenon brought home by
European travellers provided the impetus for study, comparison and
classification. The excavations at Herculaneum and Pompeii provided
antiquarians like Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717–68) with the
opportunity for detailed, object-based study.
Winckelmann is generally regarded as the founder of modern art
history in recognition of his attempts to apply scientific methodology
to the study of sculpture and architecture (Heyer and Norton 1987:
xxi; Potts 1994). His first book, Reflections on the Painting and
Sculpture of the Greeks (1755) established the Greek cultural ideal,
and his study The History of the Art of Antiquity (1764) became
central to the neo-classical movement.Winckelmann underlined the
importance of direct study of the object and sensitivity to the actual
process and skill of its creation. His attempt to link art with the ideas
and values of its period provided the basis for his recognition as the
first cultural historian (Fernie 1995: 71). Although based for much
of his later life in Rome where he converted to Roman Catholicism,
Winckelmann’s contribution to art history was formative in another
sense. His work established a German language-based tradition in
art history which remained dominant well into the twentieth century.