[The Treasure of Antiquity. Winckelmann and the Capitoline Museum in Eighteenth-Century Rome]. Part Two

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Publications in honor of Johan Joachim Winckelmann

Il Tesoro di Antichità
Winckelmann e il Museo Capitolino nella Roma del Settecento

[The Treasure of Antiquity
Winckelmann and the Capitoline Museum in Eighteenth-Century Rome]

Edited by Eloisa Dodero and Claudio Parisi Presicce

Rome, Gangemi Editore International Publishing, 2017, 384 pages

Review by Francesco Mazzaferro. Part Two

Fig. 11) Giovanni Battista Piranesi, View of Villa Albani, from Views of Rome, 1769 @ Wikimedia Commons.

Go back to Part One

This second part of the post presents the most significant contributions on the connection between Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717-1768) and Rome, all contained in the third section of the catalogue of the Treasure of Antiquity exhibition, held in Rome between 7 December 2017 and 20 May 2018.

Brigitte Kuhn-Forte 

«I visited all palaces, all villas and gardens»: Winckelmann, the Roman collections of antiquities and Villa Albani [41]

The art historian and archaeologist Brigitte Kuhn-Forte, who works at the Bibliotheca Hertziana in Rome, wrote about the art collections that Johann Joachim could admire outside the Capitoline Museum, and in particular - as we shall see - at Villa Albani. Let us, first of all, recall what was said in the first part of this post: the Albani collection - set up by Cardinal Alessandro Albani (1692-1779), the nephew of Clement XI (Pope until 1721), in his palace at the Quattro Fontane - was sold partly (thirty-four pieces) to the House of Saxony in 1728 and partly (about 400 objects) to Pope Clement XII in 1733, in the latter case to constitute the founding nucleus of the Capitoline Museum, opened in 1734. The latter was the first museum conceived in history to be opened to the public, and Winckelmann, who arrived in Rome twenty years later, was its passionate visitor. However - and here we return to Ms Kuhn-Forte’s essay - the museum was certainly not the only source through which Winckelmann got acquainted with ancient art in Rome. The city offered, in fact, an exceptionally large patrimony of statuary in the private collections of the Roman nobles. In particular, Cardinal Albani - for whom Winckelmann worked - continued to gather a considerable assortment of statues from purchases and discoveries even after the sale of the collection in 1733. He did not hold them any longer in his palace in the city centre, but in his new villa outside Rome, and it was precisely here that Winckelmann was able to study them with extreme care. In quantitative terms, Cardinal Albani even managed to put together a collection even larger than the one he had sold to Clement XII. In fact, in 1798, when French authorities imposed the transfer of more than half of the Albani collection to Paris, they seized as many as 518 sculptures and ancient columns [42]. The other great collector active in Rome at the time of Winckelmann, and like in the case of Cardinal Albani also his friend, was the young Marquis Giuseppe Rondinini (1725-1801), who inherited from the family in 1741 a collection of forty-one sculptures, but multiplied them over the years: they would become more than two hundred at his death [43].

Fig. 12) Apollo Belvedere, Roman copy of a Greek bronze of 330-320 BC Christ attributed to Leochares, 120-140 AD, Vatican Museums, Rome @ Wikimedia Commons.

The collecting of ancient sculptures, as the scholar wrote, was "the pride of Rome" [44] and it was documented since the Renaissance in repertoires of engravings that were spread across the whole of Europe. The Vatican itself (think of the Apollo Belvedere) hosted the best pieces. At the origin of the collections were the continuous discoveries in the land owned by the nobles around Rome, the reconstruction of some areas of the city after the sack of 1527 and the first campaigns of excavations, also stimulated by the desire to sell the finds [45]. “One should recall that at the time of Winckelmann the collections of Roman antiquities were still quite intact” [46], with the exception of the already mentioned sale to the House of Saxony of 1728 and that of the collection of Christina of Sweden in 1724 "acquired through the Odelscalchis by Philip V of Spain” [47]. Winckelmann was one of the last witnesses of such a concentration of art. "The great dispersions, a disgrace for the Roman artistic heritage, began almost immediately after Winckelmann's death” [48]: the eighty statues and seventy busts of the Mattei collection were distributed in 1770 to buyers on the antique market, with an important role of England; the fifteen statues preserved at Villa Medici were transported to Florence the same year by order of the Grand Duke of Tuscany; the entire Farnese collection was moved to Naples due to hereditary rights to the benefit of the Bourbon house; finally, the French occupation of the end of the century (as documented by the posts published on this blog reviewing the writings of Quatrèmere de Quincy) led to the dispossession of a very important part of the heritage, affecting not only the Albanis, but also the Borghese collection [49]. Moreover, Ms Kuhn-Forte did not hide that part of the alienation of Rome's antique assets - as a result of commercial transactions with foreign buyers - took place precisely in the period in which Winckelmann was performing the task of Commissioner of Antiquities and with his direct involvement: if in 1762 the German scholar tried in vain to impede the passage of Cassano del Pozzo’s "Paper Museum" from Cardinal Albani to King George III of England (that transaction deprived him, among other things, of a precious source of information for his studies [50]), 1764 he authorized instead the sale in England of the so-called Jenkins Venus (also called Barberini Venus, acquired by the Sheikh of Qatar in 2002 for a price that is considered the highest ever achieved for a statue in an art auction), because he considered the Capitoline Venus (still today in the museum collection) superior.

Fig. 13) Left: Venus Jenkins, also called Venus Barberini, copy of Hadrian's age with Eighteenth-century additions. Source: Pinterest. On the right: Venus Capitolina, late Hellenistic age, Capitoline Museums, Rome. @Wikimedia Commons.

The direct examination of the Roman public and private collections immediately offered Winckelmann, as early as 1756, one year after his arrival in Rome, the idea of compiling an ancient art history [51]. Johann Joachim wrote, on June 1 of that year: "I came to Rome just to look; but I find so many still unknown treasures, so many inaccuracies in all the books that have meant to treat above all the beauty in the works of the ancients, that I have to take advantage of the opportunity that was offered to me. I have several writings planned, and in particular a work on the taste of Greek artists” [52]. Together with the young Danish sculptor Johannes Wiedewelt (1731-1802), one of the first neoclassical artists, the German scholar visited "the antique collections of the nearby Medici and Borghese villas, as well as those in the Mattei (on the Celio), Montalto-Negroni (on the Esquilino) and Pamphilj (on the Gianicolo) villas", as documented in the aforementioned notebook kept at the National Library of France.

Fig. 14) Johannes Wiedewelt, Drawings of statues from Palazzo Medici, with no date. © 2018 Danmarks Kunstbibliotek Arkitekturtegninger.

Brigitte Kuhn-Forte explained, however, that when he planned the publication, Winckelmann realized that the breadth of the material at his disposal required more in-depth studies. So, if at the beginning Johann Joachim thought to write immediately, together with Mengs, a work on the taste of the ancient Greeks and then to publish a text dedicated only to the statues of the Belvedere, he actually ended up only starting the editing of the Florentine manuscript. The latter was “a 193-page notebook ... [which] included the conservation status of individual works, as well as iconographic, stylistic and dating observations: these were the first formulations of Winckelmann’s idea of the development of art in eras and styles” [53].

Fig. 15) The Florentine manuscript, exhibited at the Florence exhibition on "Winckelmann, Florence and the Etruscans. The father of archaeology in Tuscany ", held from 26 May 2016 to 30 January 2017. Source: https://museoarcheologiconazionaledifirenze.files.wordpress.com/2016/05/2016-05-30-16-20-12.jpg?w=584&h=327.

In 1758 Johann Joachim got into the service of Cardinal Alessandro Albani in an apartment reserved for him in the Palazzo alle Quattro Fontane, the already mentioned palace in central Rome which served as the site of the first ancient Albani art collection. To host the second one, Albani "had built the grandiose villa outside Porta Salaria, the subject of enthusiastic descriptions of travellers visiting Rome and Winckelmann himself” [54]. The villa was built between 1747 and 1765 by the architect Carlo Marchionni (1702-1786), with the clear intention of reproducing themes and structures of ancient Roman architecture. The authoress explicitly spoke of a "restitution of the eternal Rome. (...) The restitution strategy included purchases of antiquities from collections of renown fame in the process of dissolution (Cesi, Giustiniani, Farnese, Este, Aldobrandini, Barberini, Verosi), or the repurchase / redemption of works from English collectors with the goal of returning them to Rome (two Hermes Massimo from the Mead auction, the obelisk still at Villa Albani)” [55].

 

Fig. 16) Giuseppe Vasi (1710–1782), Casino of the Villa Albani outside of Porta Salaria, 1761 @ Wikimedia Commons.

The circles around Albani were actually divided, from a point of view of aesthetic taste, between the proponents of Greek and Roman art. Among the first there was certainly Winckelmann, among the latter instead Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-1778). The relationship between the two - the authoress noted - was cold. Beyond the obvious difference in the appreciation of ancient art, also professional rivalries may have been at stake: Piranesi hoped that Winckelmann would return to Germany, in order to "succeed him in the position of Commissioner of Antiquities" [56]. 

Fig. 17) Statue of Alexander the Great, restored by the workshop of Bartolomeo Cavaceppi and belonging to the Albani collection, before the French requisition. It is today located in the Louvre.@ Wikimedia Commons.

Winckelmann's letters testified (perhaps with some exaggeration, according to the authoress) how Johann Joachim collaborated with Albani in the purchase and restoration of the sculptures [57]. Actually Winckelmann was not the only interlocutor of Albani. For example, also Bartolomeo Cavaceppi (ca 1716 -1799) had his atelier within the perimeter of Villa Albani, and played an important role in the restoration and integration of the statues. What is certain is that the works of the Albani collection preserved in the Villa outside of Porta Salaria represented the most important nucleus of the volume of Unpublished Ancient Monuments published by Winckelmann in 1767.

Federica Papi 

The protection of artistic heritage in Rome at the time of Winckelmann [58]

The historian of restoration Federica Papi explained that - when Winckelmann arrived in Rome in 1755 - the Papal State was equipped with of a series of legal instruments to defend its patrimony through a series of edicts, bans and prohibitions. However, they had all been conceived at the beginning of the century (at the latest in 1733) and were therefore not sufficient, from a normative point of view, to face the new state of affairs after the recent economic crisis:  all great Roman noble families, in fact, were reacting to increasing financial strains by precipitating to alienate their legacy of statues to rich public and private collectors outside Italy. The last edict, that of 1733, was issued by Clement XII as an integral part of the politics of heritage protection that would lead to the simultaneous acquisition of the first collection of statues of Cardinal Albani and the establishment of the Capitoline Museum. In the second part of the century the Papal States, once the protagonist of an enlightened politics of heritage defence, revealed their bureaucratic and cultural backwardness.

Fig. 18) The title page of the edition of the History of Drawing Arts of the Ancients by Johann Joachim Winckelmann, edited by Carlo Fea in 1783. Source: https://archive.org/details/storiadelleartid01winc/page/n9

Only in 1802 - when, however, many collections had already been dispersed - the Papal State endowed themselves with a more modern legal instrument thanks to Carlo Fea (among other things, the curator of the second Italian translation of the History of Drawing Arts of the Ancients by Winckelmann in 1783). During the Eighteenth century the legislative void was only partially filled by the action and thought of individual personalities; in addition to Winckelmann, the author referred to Giovanni Gaetano Bottari, the Count of Caylus, Johann Gottfried Herder, Quatremère de Quincy, Ennio Quirino Visconti and Luigi Lanzi. Winckelmann had a primary role in the defence of Roman heritage as Commissioner of Antiquities from 1763 to 1768 (the year of his death). 

Fig. 19) On the left: The so-called Winckelmann Faun, second century after Christ. Source: https://schriftkultur.uni-halle.de/en/winckelmann-moderne-antike-3/. On the right: image of the Faun in the Unpublished Ancient Monuments by Johann Joachim Winckelmann, Plate 59, 1767 Source: https://archive.org/details/monumentiantichi01winc/page/n185

When taking the assignment, Winckelmann did not give the impression of considering the task of controlling the flow of exports of artistic goods (which included not only the Greek-Roman statues and other artefacts of ancient art, but also paintings and artworks in general, including those of living artists) as particularly burdensome. He assigned all the most bothersome inspection tasks to his collaborators. During the five years in office, Johann Joachim authorized fifty-seven requests; to these one should add thirty authorizations signed by the collaborators. According to Ms Papi, there was no evidence that Winckelmann ever denied a single request. In just one case (the so-called Winckelmann Faun), the German scholar avoided the export by buying himself the bust from Cavaceppi [59]. From the research of Roland Kanz we know that Winckelmann considered the Faun as a prototype of beauty (so much to write of wanting to embrace and kiss it) and did not notice the heavy touches that it had suffered in the workshop of Cavaceppi. On the other hand, he authorized the export from Rome of canvases attributed to Paolo Veronese, Titian, Guido Reni, Guercino, Poussin, Luca Giordano and Mattia Preti [60]. As already mentioned, Johann Joachim also authorized the exportation of the Jenkins Venus, restored by Cavaceppi, with the following words: "Although her torso is most beautiful, it cannot be compared to the Venus of the Capitoline Museum, which is absolute perfect” [61].  Today the work of Winckelmann at the Roman administration would attract much criticism.

Max Kunze
«Sein Studium ist unendlich». Winckelmann's lesson in the Capitol [62]

The German archaeologist Max Kunze, author of countless studies on Winckelmann's cultural heritage in very different countries (from Spain to Russia), devoted himself here to the contents and modalities of Winckelmann's teaching to the many young nobles who were coming from all over Europe to Rome for the Grand Tour. In particular, he focused on a text of 1763, i.e. the Abhandlung von der Fähigkeit der Empfindung des Schönen in der Kunst, und dem Unterrichte in derselben or the Lesson on the capacity of the feeling of beauty in art and on the teaching of the same.

Fig. 20) On the left: Ferdinand Hartmann (1774-1842), Posthumous portrait of Johann Joachim Winckelmann, 1794. The portrait was inspired by that of Angelika Kauffmann of 1764. @Wikimedia Commons. On the right: Johann Winckelmanns, Präsidentens der Alterthümer in Rom, und Scrittore der Vaticanischen Bibliothek ... Abhandlung von der Fähigkeit der Schönen in der Kunst, und dem Unterrichte in derselben. An den Edelgebohrnen Freyherrn, Friedrich Rudolph von Berg, aus Liefland, 1763 Source: https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_GlYtsMUnIK0C/page/n0.

Kunze was adamant in explaining that, in most cases, education was, for the German scholar, an emotional issue, to which he dedicated himself wholeheartedly. He did not consider its activity as a simple guiding of visitors across the streets of Rome. Winckelmann immediately dismissed the young people who proved to be inactive (like the Saxon Count Georg von Callenberg, 1744-1795), while welcoming with great affection the most devoted students to the subject, such as Leonard (1741-1789) and Paul Usteri (1746-1814) as well as Hans Heinrich Füssli (1745-1832), all from Zurich. The first would eventually become theologian and pedagogue, the last historian (it is a homonym of the painter, but not the same person). With some of his students Johann entertained contacts for a lifetime. Leonhard would publish the letters sent by Winckelmann to his Swiss friends in 1778; and it is precisely to Leonhard that the German scholar would venture to confess, in 1762, that he had hopelessly fallen in love with one of his students, the twenty-six-year-old baron Friedrich Reinhold von Berg (1736-1809), for whom he wrote a descriptive memory (the Annotations about the Statues of Rome) and to which he dedicated the aforementioned Abhandlung. The young von Berg - who had come to Rome from the distant Riga - abandoned Rome abruptly without any warning [63].

The Lesson was a dissertation on the teaching method. Winckelmann went so far as to theorize that the teaching of artworks (and here in particular of sculptures) should be addressed only to young people who are free from any physical and material need ("they have means, opportunities and free time" [64]) and can devote all their energies to the study. It should however be said that this category also included young bourgeois (like those from Zurich) who were not nobles, but had the necessary education.

Fig. 21) On the left: Author and date unknown, Portrait of Count Georg Alexander Heinrich Hermann von Callenberg, lord of Muskau. Source: https://www.geni.com. Right: The edition of the "Winckelmann's letters to his friends in Switzerland", published by Leonhard Usteri in 1778.

Johann Joachim recommended that the lessons would not to immediately begin with the examination of the ancient finds, but "to start... with the study of ancient and modern art literature, so as to acquire the necessary notions about the art itself” [65]. The next step was the study "of coins and casts of gems” [66]. `As to the final goal, i.e. "the true and complete knowledge of beauty” [67], it could only be reached in Rome. Already in a previous manuscript of 1759, entitled Lesson for the Germans in Rome ("Unterricht für die Deutschen von Rom"), Johann Joachim had recommended preparing the trip by preceding it by a study of many years, and to dedicate sufficient time for learning in Rome, which was otherwise like a sea in which it was very easy to get lost [68].

From the letters of the aforementioned Leonhard Usteri we learn that Winckelmann's teaching was very intense: "I am entirely his pupil, he punctuates my lessons and leaves me just enough time to write” [69]. Another of the aforementioned Zurich citizens, Hans Heinrich Füssli, was totally admired by the master: "His mind is great, but his heart is even bigger" [70]. Füssli was perhaps the most gifted of his students in Rome, and the one to which Winckelmann was most dedicated. Max Kunze wrote: "Füssli described in these terms the teaching method of Winckelmann: «He always proceeds from works of art to men, and from the latter to those. Thus he reconstructs the character of different nations, of Rome and of Greece in particular, through their different ages; thus their political and moral foundations emerge»” [71].

Thomas Fröhlich
Through the eyes of Winckelmann: the Capitoline sculptures in the Geschichte der Kunst [72]

The archaeologist Thomas Fröhlich, active at the Germanic Archaeological Institute of Rome, wrote on the crucial role that the finds then kept in the Capitoline Hill or other Roman collections had for the preparation of the major works of Winckelmann, i.e. the Geschichte der Kunst des Altertums (History of the Art of the Ancients), published in 1764, almost ten years after the arrival of the scholar in Rome. In the History, the examination of individual finds and the discussion of their stylistic collocation in the development of the art of the Egyptians, Etruscans, Greeks and Romans were of the essence.

Fig. 22) On the left: Cast of the Egyptian Antinous, exhibited at the Roman exhibition on Winckelmann (the original is in the Vatican Museums). Source: http://www.artslife.com/2018/01/17/winckelmann-e-il-museo-capitolino-nella-roma-del-settecento/. On the right: Base with the labours of Heracles, Neo-Attic workshop of early Imperial age. Source: http://www.museicapitolini.org/it/percorsi/percorsi_per_sale/palazzo_nuovo/stanzette_terrene/base_con_fatiche_di_eracle.

Speaking of the Egyptians, Winckelmann documented how some themes of the art of that civilization were also present in the late Roman period (it is the case of the Egyptian Antinous). As for Etruscan art, the obligatory reference was the Capitoline Wolf. In other cases (such as the Apollo of the Kassel type at the Capitoline museum, now considered a Roman copy of the era of the Severan dynasty), Johann Joachim revealed many uncertainties [73]. As to a Base with the representation of the labours of Hercules, today certainly considered an Attic Greek work of the Roman imperial age, Winckelmann erroneously considered it as Etruscan.

Fig, 23) On the left: Leuchotea, in Johann Joachim Winckelmann, Unpublished Ancient Monuments, 1767. Source: https://archive.org/details/monumentiantichi01winc/page/n177. On the right: The original, a late-Hadrian Greek marble, which can be seen at the Capitoline Museums and represents the young Dionysus (Inv. Scu 734). Source: http://capitolini.info/scu00734/

The heart of the writing was however on the birth, development and decline of Greek art. It is here that Winckelmann distinguished - on the basis of Neoplatonic aesthetics - between natural and ideal beauty. The ideal beauty was represented above all by the Apollonian nudes, in which the simple and calm representation of the natural beauty of a young man's virile body was enhanced by perfection and softness, avoiding excessive drawing of muscles and veins [74] Fröhlich wrote: "To this context belonged the beautiful head of Dionysus in the Hall of Galata, of which Winckelmann described the «slightly swaying eyelids», and which for the diadem in hair and the feminine appearance he identified with the nymph Ino-Leuchotea” [75].

Fig. 24) On the left: Capitoline Flora, Hadrian's Age with restoration by Carlo Monaldi, Capitoline Museums, Rome @ Wikimedia Commons. On the right: Statue of Pothos, First Imperial Age, Capitoline Museums, Rome @ Wikimedia Commons

On the other hand, natural beauty was inferior, because it was imitating a real, pleasant but still imperfect situation. An example - in the collection created by Clement XII in 1733 - of 'only' natural beauty was according to Johann Joachim the so-called Capitoline Flora. The statue of the Hadrian era was found in Villa Adriana in 1740 and therefore did not belong to the original collection of Cardinal Albani transferred to the Capitoline Museum in 1733. It arrived there only in 1744, after a restoration by the sculptor Carlo Monaldi (about 1683 - about 1760), who interpreted the subject precisely with Flora (in line with the interpretation of Bottari) and added the left hand with a bunch of flowers [76]. Winckelmann did not share the attribution, had doubts about the restoration, but above all saw in the statue an image failing to transcend reality (and considered indeed the recent addition of flowers as out of tune) [77]. Also the statue of Pothos (which he sighted at the Villa Medici Gallery - before the transfer to the Uffizi of Florence - and interpreted like an Apollo [78]) betrayed naturalistic accents (for instance, due to the crossing of the legs).

Certainly less important was the role of Roman art, obviously very present at the Capitoline Museums, but to which Winckelmann did not recognize any originality.

Fröhlich concluded his short essay with a consideration about the imitation of art. Studying in an intense way all the available works, Winckelmann soon realized that copies of works in the Capitoline Museum were also present outside of it. If some of his contemporaries (among whom Mengs) began to raise the problem of the originality of the works, for Winckelmann the question of whether he was confronted with originals or copies was a minor theme, compared to the ability of the image to represent objectively the ideal beauty [79]. The scholar concluded: "In my view, the concept of originality did not play a fundamental role in his thought. He was convinced that the history of art followed a natural path of growth, flowering and decadence, and that the specific artistic path was determined by the historical-social and geographical context. In this concept, the figure of the ingenious master was not of primary importance” [80].

Federica Giacomini 
Winckelmann and the restoration of the Capitoline sculptures [81]

Federica Giacomini, restorer and art historian, discussed the theme of what Winckelmann thought of the restoration practices of ancient sculptures in his time. It was an ideal theme to be discussed in relations to the Capitoline Museums, as the current collection is among the few in the world to have not been subjected "during the Twentieth century to questionable campaigns of ‘un-restoration’, or removal of ancient integrations” [82].

Fig. 25) Statue of wounded Amazon, Mattei type, first imperial age, Capitoline Museums, Rome. The head, which is also ancient, is however not pertinent, and was added during the XV-XVII centuries. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

As soon as he arrived in Rome, Winckelmann could verify with his hand that many authors and commentators were characterized by "the incapability, or rather the lack of interest, to distinguish the ancient and the original in a sculpture from what was due to modern restoration interventions. Restoration often concerned essential parts of the work, such as the heads and arms, bearing, in general, the necessary attributes for identifying the subject of each work. The authors criticized by Winckelmann therefore interpreted the works without posing the problem of modern restorations, falling into sometimes grotesque errors and misleading readers. The need to refute these superficial errors, to begin to free the works «from the dross of traditional comments» was such that a treatise on the restoration was among the very first works to which Winckelmann dedicated himself immediately after his arrival in Rome. After all, he considered it only a preliminary work; therefore, that survey never saw the light, as it was soon be overtaken by commitments of much other critical-theoretical breath” [83].

The scholar explained how the discipline of the restoration of the ancient statuary was born in 1500 in unison with the spread of collecting. At that time there was no cultural (philological) readiness to accept that an original could reveal the vicissitudes of time and should therefore be preserved in the conditions of discovery, implementing only conservative measures. Sometimes the interventions were extemporaneous and sometimes even completely inappropriate. Parts of ancient artefacts that were not relevant to each other were at times combined or complemented by highly imaginative modern additions (as we have already seen in this blog about writings by Bartolomeo Cavaceppi  and Giovanni Battista Casanova) [84] Manipulations of the surface allowed to give a new look to the statues, but sometimes they also destroyed the original image [85].  While Winckelmann was decidedly opposed to the second type of intervention, his attitude was ambiguous towards completions, and it would be excessive to attribute to the scholar modern conservative concerns.

Fig. 26) Female seated statue, so-called the "Cesi Rome", probable copy of Hadrian's age from an original of the 5th century BC (the head, the right arm and part of the chest are restored). Capitoline Museums, Rome. Wikimedia Commons and © José Luiz Bernardes Ribeiro

"The taste for the completion of the mutilated statues persisted throughout the Eighteenth century and was in fact shared by Winckelmann himself. For a philological reading of the pieces, necessary for the scholar and the archaeologist, the preservation of the intact originality of the fragment would be the best path to pursue, but the formal harmony of the integral sculpture was too rooted as an aesthetic and cultural habit to renounce it. However Winckelmann dictated a narrower way through which integrations and reconstructions would have to pass first of all through the advice of scholars with antiquarian competence and artistic and stylistic ability - who should be able to use all the available tools of philology and art - in order to guarantee a correct interpretation of the fragment” [86]. In short, Federica Giacomini explained that the practice of restoration continued, but had to be inspired by quality criteria, which in the case of Winckelmann meant that they had to follow the same logic of the beautiful ideal to which - in his opinion - Greek civilization had been oriented. These were the ideals of the so-called “noble simplicity and quiet grandeur", the two themes at the centre of Winckelmann’s aesthetic. "He praised the interventions of the past not so much for the correct interpretation or for their adaptation to the style of the original, but for the high intrinsic quality of the additions” [87].

Fig. 27) The so-called Dacia Capta, first century after Christ, Capitoline Museums, Rome. Source:http://capitolini.net/object.xql?urn=urn:collectio:0001:scu:00776

This is the reason why some restorations pleased the German scholar, while others did much less. Among the restorations that he liked, there was a bas-relief that Pope Clement XI purchased from the Cesi collection in 1719. It represented a defeated Roman province, and has traditionally been interpreted as "Dacia capta", Dacia (today’s Romania) being kept in captivity. The restoration, according to the catalogue of the Capitoline Museums, was very large, because it involved "the head, the left arm from the elbow, the right elbow, both volutes except the end of the palettes and rosettes and part of the upper molding of the sides." It is not known today whether the intervention was carried out in mid-1500, when the statue entered the collection of Cardinal Federico Cesi, or in subsequent years. The fact is that Winckelmann considered it "the most beautiful in the world” [88] and even attributed it to masters such as Sansovino or Dusquenoy or Algardi. The judgment on the rest of the group belonging to the Cesi Rome group (the Goddess Roma and the two Dacian Prisoners) was much less positive. What was the reason for such a different evaluation, although most likely the restoration was performed by the same person? The authoress wrote: "The Dacia, even in the afflicted expression, retained the classic characters of ideal beauty, while the faces of the Prisoners had a marked, almost grotesque expression, obtained moreover by an insistent minutia of carving in place of the turned smoothness of the surfaces of the Dacia. Something similar can be said for the head of restoration of the Goddess Rome, but with a style in this case more characterized and particular, therefore less responsive to that canon of the absolute beauty of which Winckelmann, in those years, was building the critical and philosophical foundations” [89]. 

NOTES

[41] Il Tesoro di Antichità. Winckelmann e il Museo Capitolino nella Roma del Settecento. Edited by Claudio Parisi Presicce and Eloisa Dodero, 2017, 384 pages. Quotation at page 195-210.

[42] Il Tesoro di Antichità (quoted), p. 196.

[43] Il Tesoro di Antichità (quoted), p. 197.

[44] Il Tesoro di Antichità (quoted), p. 195.

[45] Il Tesoro di Antichità (quoted), p. 195.

[46] Il Tesoro di Antichità (quoted), p. 195.

[47] Il Tesoro di Antichità (quoted), p. 195.

[48] Il Tesoro di Antichità (quoted), p. 195.

[49] Il Tesoro di Antichità (quoted), p. 196.

[50] Il Tesoro di Antichità (quoted), p. 206.

[51] Il Tesoro di Antichità (quoted), p. 197.

[52] Il Tesoro di Antichità (quoted), p. 199.

[53] Il Tesoro di Antichità (quoted), p. 199.

[54] Il Tesoro di Antichità (quoted), p. 202.

[55] Il Tesoro di Antichità (quoted), p. 202.

[56] Il Tesoro di Antichità (quoted), p. 204.

[57] Il Tesoro di Antichità (quoted), p. 205.

[58] Il Tesoro di Antichità (quoted), pp. 211-218.

[59] Il Tesoro di Antichità (quoted), p. 216.

[60] Il Tesoro di Antichità (quoted), p. 216.

[61] Il Tesoro di Antichità (quoted), p. 217.

[62] Il Tesoro di Antichità (quoted), pp. 219-226.

[63] Il Tesoro di Antichità (quoted), p. 219.

[64] Il Tesoro di Antichità (quoted), p. 219.

[65] Il Tesoro di Antichità (quoted), pp. 219-220.

[66] Il Tesoro di Antichità (quoted), p. 220.

[67] Il Tesoro di Antichità (quoted), p. 220.

[68] Il Tesoro di Antichità (quoted), p. 220.

[69] Il Tesoro di Antichità (quoted), p. 221.

[70] Il Tesoro di Antichità (quoted), p. 221.

[71] Il Tesoro di Antichità (quoted), p. 222.

[72] Il Tesoro di Antichità (quoted), pp. 227-241.

[73] Il Tesoro di Antichità (quoted), p. 229-230.

[74] Il Tesoro di Antichità (quoted), p. 232.

[75] Il Tesoro di Antichità (quoted), p. 235.

[76] Il Tesoro di Antichità (quoted), p. 341.

[77] Il Tesoro di Antichità (quoted), p. 232.

[78] Il Tesoro di Antichità (quoted), p. 346.

[79] Il Tesoro di Antichità (quoted), p. 238.

[80] Il Tesoro di Antichità (quoted), pp. 238-239.

[81] Il Tesoro di Antichità (quoted), pp. 259-264.

[82] Il Tesoro di Antichità (quoted), p. 262.

[83] Il Tesoro di Antichità (quoted), p. 259.

[84] Il Tesoro di Antichità (quoted), p. 260.

[85] Il Tesoro di Antichità (quoted), p. 260.

[86] Il Tesoro di Antichità (quoted), p. 260.

[87] Il Tesoro di Antichità (quoted), p. 260.

[88] Il Tesoro di Antichità (quoted), p. 261.

[89] Il Tesoro di Antichità (quoted), p. 261.