A History of Art in Ancient Egypt, Vol. 1 (of 2)Perrot, Georges
History
A History of Art in Ancient Egypt, Vol. 1 (of 2)
Perrot, Georges
Art -- Egypt -- History; Egypt -- Antiquities
century, were only known to the historian by the descriptions and
allusions of the ancient authors.
[5] Winckelmann's History of Ancient Art should be read in
connection with his Remarks upon the History of Art, which is a
kind of supplement to it, and takes the place of that new
edition of which the author's premature and tragic death
deprived the world. It is an answer to the objections which made
themselves heard on every side; the preface to _Monumenti
inediti_ (Rome, 1867, 2 vols. in folio, with 208 plates) should
also be read. The method of Winckelmann is there most clearly
explained. Finally, the student of the life and labours of
Winckelmann may consult with profit the interesting work of Carl
Iusti, _Winckelmann, sein Leben, seine Werke, und seine
Zeitgenossen_, which will give him a clear idea of the state of
archæology at the time when the German _savant_ intervened to
place it upon a higher footing.
In such a case as this the clearest and most precise of verbal
descriptions is of less value than any fragment of marble upon which
the hand of the artist is still to be traced. Who would then have
guessed that the following generation would have the opportunity of
studying those splendid groups of decorative sculpture whose close
relation to the architecture of certain famous temples has taught us
so much? Who in those days dreamt of looking at, still less of
drawing, the statues in the pediments and sculptured friezes of the
Parthenon, of the Thesæum, of the temples at Ægina, at Phigalia, or at
Olympia? Now if Winckelmann was ignorant of these, the real monuments
of classic perfection, it follows that he was hardly competent to
recognise and define true archaism or to distinguish the works of
sculpture which bore the marks of the deliberate, eclectic, and
over-polished taste of the critical epochs. He made the same mistake
in speaking of architecture. It was always, or nearly always, by the
edifices of Rome and Italy, by their arrangement and decoration, that
he pretended to explain and judge the architecture of Greece.
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