Burying and excavating Winckelmann's History of Art

Abstract

This article examines the early responses to Winckelmann’s 1764 ‘History of the Art of Antiquity’. Recently, scholars have become especially interested in the early reception of Winckelmann's work. This discussion makes productive use of that debate, to examine how eighteenth-century translators of Winckelmann set about inventing an image of him as the founding father of classical art history and archaeology. This essay examines how the early French and Italian translations of Winckelmann were introduced by lavish illustrations of Winckelmann’s tomb. These translators encouraged their readers to mourn for Winckelmann. The essay examines how these pictures of mourning competed to invent an image of Winckelmann as the exemplary Classical Art Historian, and how these pictures police their mournful invention. The article contributes to thinking about the institutionalisation of classical art history and archaeology as academic disciplines, by considering how 18th-century readers reified the figure of the art historian.