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Dromo's Den
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[Up] [Dromo's Den] Winckelmann Biography WINCKELMANN, vĭn′kel-män, Johann Joachim (1717–68). A German classical archæologist and art historian. Born at Stendal, Brandenburg, on Dec. 9, 1717, the son of a poor cobbler, he was educated as a charity scholar in his native town, and then graduated from the Köllnisches Gymnasium in Berlin. From 1738 to 1740 he studied theology and the classics at Halle, then mathematics and medicine at Jena, and was tutor at Hadmersleben, and associate rector in the grammar school at Seehausen in 1743. In 1748 chance brought him employment in the library of the Saxon ex-minister and historian Count Bünau, at Nöthnitz, near Dresden, where he remained six years. His association with eminent artists and scholars at Dresden and the valuable instruction and advice which he received there, especially from Oeser, determined him to follow the career of a classical archæologist. His conversion to Roman Catholicism, the court religion at Dresden, through the papal nuncio at Dresden, Count Archinto, furnished the opportunity to prosecute this career. After a year in Dresden devoted solely to his studies, he published his first work, Gedanken über die Nachahmung der griechischen Werke in der Malerei und Bildhauerkunst (1755), well illustrated by Oeser, which brought him a royal stipend for two years in Rome. In November, 1755, he arrived at Rome, and immediately began the study of its treasures of classical antiquities, in which he was greatly aided by the friendship of Raphael Mengs. In 1757 he became librarian to Archinto, who in the meanwhile had been made a Cardinal and Secretary of State. In 1758 he visited Naples, Herculaneum, and Pompeii, and then spent nine months in Florence, cataloguing the unique collection of antique gems and intaglios of Baron Stosch. After the death of Cardinal Archinto he became librarian to Cardinal Albani, the passionate art lover and most famous collector of his time, under whose roof he henceforth lived as a friend and confidant. Repeated visits to Naples resulted in several publications which greatly contributed to the elevation of taste in the decorative arts, but his greatest work is the Geschichte der Kunst des Altertums (1764; new ed., by Julius Lessing, with biography, 1882; Eng. trans. by G. H. Lodge, Boston, 1880). Through it, and in the field of archæology, through the Monumenti antichi inediti (1767–68; new ed., 1821), Winckelmann became the true expounder of classic art and the founder of scientific archæology. His views of the theory of the beautiful called forth Lessing's Laokoon and profoundly impressed Goethe, eliciting his famous Winckelmann und sein Jahrhundert (1805; Eng. trans., New York, 1914). In April, 1768, he left Rome in company with the sculptor Cavaceppi to revisit Germany, but in passing the Alps he evinced a strange reluctance to leave Italy, and was with difficulty persuaded to proceed to Munich. At Vienna he was received with honor by the Empress Maria Theresa. On his way back to Rome by way of Trieste, he was murdered there in a hotel June 8, 1768, by a robber named Arcangeli. In Winckelmann's honor a marble statue was erected in the vestibule of the Berlin Museum, a monument in his birthplace, and a colossal marble bust in the Villa Albani, Rome. The New International Encyclopaedia, Vol. XXIII (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1920) 609. |