BOOKS: History of Art

Johann Joachim Winckelmann was the librarian that defined western art history. Winckelmann's History of Ancient Art (1764) was one of the first books to become a classic of European literature. His influence was pervasive. It touched the subsequent study of archaeology, art history, painting, sculpture, literature and philosophy. Hey he was one influential librarian. Imagine a librarian defining western aesthetics! Think of the stereotype of a librarians today. Hardly the picture of aesthetics. Winckelmann defined western beauty over centuries. He was the first to categorize and differentiate between Egyptian, Persian, Greek and Roman ideals of beauty. His “History of Art,’ is still available today and well worth the read if you are interested in the Western sense of beauty in art. Winckelmann analyzed what these ancient people understood beauty and how they depicted that beauty in their architecture, painting and sculpture. Why is this important? Because it affects what people in the West believe to be beautiful today. We have inherited are standards from the past. Winckelmann brought that aesthetic past to life, cataloged it and defined it. He examined ideas of beauty over time and space and gave a descriptive and historical account of its conceptual paradigms. Those paradigms have followed us into the 21^st century. What we see as beautiful today is directly related to our ancient past. On his “day job.” so to speak, Winckelmann was a librarian to Count Heinrich von Bunau, a German statesman and historian who had a 42,000 volume library in Dresden containing many works from the ancient authors as well as those the works from Voltaire and Montesquieu. It is here that his interest in art was awaken as he worked in the library and also toured the art treasures of Dresden. In 1763, Winkelmann also became Prefetto delle Antichità of the Vatican library a position once associated with the painter Raphael. Winckelmann was the ultimate taste-maker. Hmm__ a librarian who was an arbiter of style and beauty. Imagine that. Through a librarian the beauty Greek art was carried forward to us today. Recommended reading.