Anthropologie et ethnologie de l'histoire de l'art au xviiiesiècle. Winckelmann et le tableau des peuples antiques

Abstract

Which are the characters of the ancient Greeks and other people of the ancient world (Egyptians, Phoenicians, Etruscans, Romans etc.) ? Do the modern Greeks possess the same qualities as the ancient one ? Many of Winckelmann’s works and above all the Gedanken über die Nachahmung der griechischen Werke (1755) and the Geschichte der Kunst des Altertums (1764) deal with those central questions. The fact that Winckelmann was deeply interested in those anthropological and ethnological problems shouldn’t surprise us. Winckelmann considers ancient art as the result of many factors, among which cultural, climatical, political and biological elements play a decisive role. The purpose of the present paper is to analyse those anthropological and ethnological aspects of Winckelmann’s art conception and art history – aspects which are closely related to his critical lecture of some authors of the eighteenth century (Shaftesbury, Montesquieu, Caylus) and which opened a lively debate among some of his readers (Herder).