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from the ceilings of local lodgings at night and infested the ruins where shepherds still let their flocks graze. These travelers ignored as well the repulsive stench from the latrines near the monuments and the way the thuggish Turkish guards extracted exorbitant bribes to view the sites. Instead, books such as
Ruines des plus beaux monuments de la Grèce
(1758) and
Antiquities of Athens
(1762) contained drawings of wistful, lovely scenes of broken pillars and ferns bursting through the cracks of abandoned temples. Printing after printing sold out. In particular,
Voyage du jeune anacharsis en Grèce
byJean-Jacques Barthélemy (1788) went through many editions in the original French and in every other European language, including Greek. This novel purports to be the journey of a young prince through classical Greece, but its account of ancient people and times was regarded as authentic by its many readers.
In Paris in the 1760s, as a worldly observer noted, “Everything is
à la grecque
. The interior and exterior decoration of buildings, furniture, fabrics, jewelry of all kinds, everything in Paris is
à la grecque
.” Travelers to Rome rushed to see theLaocoön and the Apollo Belvedere with all the expectation andexcitement that is reserved today for theSistine Chapel.Josiah Wedgwood began to mass-produce fine china.John Flaxman, his principal designer, copied his vases and plaques from Greek originals he found in theBritish Museum. Flaxman also produced a popular series of prints of scenes fromHomer.
For fine artists, Winckelmann’s basic ideas seemed to reveal hidden but powerful natural laws: Good taste began in Greece; the only way to achieve great art was by imitating the ancients; the greatness in Greek art lay in its “noble simplicity” and “quiet grandeur.” These ideas inspired neoclassicism, a movement of artists such as the French painterJacques-Louis David, the Italian sculptorAntonio Canova, and the English architect SirJohn Soane, whose work began to appear in the years after Winckelmann’s death. Their principal aesthetic was imitation of the noble simplicity of classical Greek art.
Winckelmann’s belief that Greek art flourished because of the political freedom in classical times became almost a mantra for orators during the French Revolution. His conception of art as moving through a cycle of four distinct periods lasted well into the nineteenth century, when it became a dividing point between the neoclassicists and the romantics. And his belief that art can reveal the divine as well as or better than religion is still with us today.
Winckelmann was the intellectual, emotional, and spiritual father of every aspect of the classical obsession that would last in Europe well past the 1820s. Without the profound change in taste and thinking that he inspired, there would have been no passion for
la grecque
in Paris. But more important, there would have been no paintings by David, no sculptures by Canova, no buildings by Sir John Soane, no Wedgwood china, no prints by John Flaxman. And the Venus de Milo would never have excited the interest of the French ships’ captains and ambitious ensigns who anchored at Melos in 1820. She would have remained in the niche, covered over by the farmerYorgos, and never arrived in Paris to become the reigning goddess of the Louvre.
III
In the Hallways of the Louvre
T HE V ENUS DE M ILO arrived in Paris in February 1821. The city, after ten years of revolution beginning in 1789, followed by sixteen years of submission to Napoleon’s will, followed by five years of exhaustion and stagnation, had recently awakened to find itself once again the place where life seemed fullest, gayest, and prettiest. The foreign soldiers who had occupied the city after Waterloo had all left. The reparations demanded of the French government for theNapoleonic Wars had been paid. TheBourbons were back on the throne in the person of Louis XVIII, the brother of the guillotined Louis XVI,
Ruines des plus beaux monuments de la Grèce
(1758) and
Antiquities of Athens
(1762) contained drawings of wistful, lovely scenes of broken pillars and ferns bursting through the cracks of abandoned temples. Printing after printing sold out. In particular,
Voyage du jeune anacharsis en Grèce
byJean-Jacques Barthélemy (1788) went through many editions in the original French and in every other European language, including Greek. This novel purports to be the journey of a young prince through classical Greece, but its account of ancient people and times was regarded as authentic by its many readers.
In Paris in the 1760s, as a worldly observer noted, “Everything is
à la grecque
. The interior and exterior decoration of buildings, furniture, fabrics, jewelry of all kinds, everything in Paris is
à la grecque
.” Travelers to Rome rushed to see theLaocoön and the Apollo Belvedere with all the expectation andexcitement that is reserved today for theSistine Chapel.Josiah Wedgwood began to mass-produce fine china.John Flaxman, his principal designer, copied his vases and plaques from Greek originals he found in theBritish Museum. Flaxman also produced a popular series of prints of scenes fromHomer.
For fine artists, Winckelmann’s basic ideas seemed to reveal hidden but powerful natural laws: Good taste began in Greece; the only way to achieve great art was by imitating the ancients; the greatness in Greek art lay in its “noble simplicity” and “quiet grandeur.” These ideas inspired neoclassicism, a movement of artists such as the French painterJacques-Louis David, the Italian sculptorAntonio Canova, and the English architect SirJohn Soane, whose work began to appear in the years after Winckelmann’s death. Their principal aesthetic was imitation of the noble simplicity of classical Greek art.
Winckelmann’s belief that Greek art flourished because of the political freedom in classical times became almost a mantra for orators during the French Revolution. His conception of art as moving through a cycle of four distinct periods lasted well into the nineteenth century, when it became a dividing point between the neoclassicists and the romantics. And his belief that art can reveal the divine as well as or better than religion is still with us today.
Winckelmann was the intellectual, emotional, and spiritual father of every aspect of the classical obsession that would last in Europe well past the 1820s. Without the profound change in taste and thinking that he inspired, there would have been no passion for
la grecque
in Paris. But more important, there would have been no paintings by David, no sculptures by Canova, no buildings by Sir John Soane, no Wedgwood china, no prints by John Flaxman. And the Venus de Milo would never have excited the interest of the French ships’ captains and ambitious ensigns who anchored at Melos in 1820. She would have remained in the niche, covered over by the farmerYorgos, and never arrived in Paris to become the reigning goddess of the Louvre.
III
In the Hallways of the Louvre
T HE V ENUS DE M ILO arrived in Paris in February 1821. The city, after ten years of revolution beginning in 1789, followed by sixteen years of submission to Napoleon’s will, followed by five years of exhaustion and stagnation, had recently awakened to find itself once again the place where life seemed fullest, gayest, and prettiest. The foreign soldiers who had occupied the city after Waterloo had all left. The reparations demanded of the French government for theNapoleonic Wars had been paid. TheBourbons were back on the throne in the person of Louis XVIII, the brother of the guillotined Louis XVI,
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