[The legacy of Johann Joachim Winckelmann in Spain]. Edited by Max Kunze and Jorge Maier Allende. Part One

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Publications in honor of Johan Joachim Winckelmann

El Legado de Johann Joachim Winckelmann en España /Das Vermächtnis von Johann Joachim Winckelmann in Spanien 

[The Legacy of Johann Joachim Winckelmann in Spain]
Proceedings of the international conference in Madrid (20-21 October 2011)
Edited by Max Kunze and Jorge Maier Allende.

Mainz and Ruhpolding, Verlag Franz Philipp Rutzen, 2013, 314 pages.

Review by Francesco Mazzaferro. Part One

Fig. 1) The proceedings of the Madrid conference on the legacy of Johann Joachim Winckelmann in Spain

Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717-1768) never visited Spain and few of his works have been translated and published in Spanish until recent years. It is true, in fact, that the Geschichte der Kunst des Altertums of 1763, or the History of the Art of Antiquity was the subject of a translation first by Antonio Capmany (1742-1813) and then by Diego Antonio Rejón de Silva (1754- 1796). However the first Spanish version (executed on the basis of a unauthorised edition in French by Gottfried Sellius, published in Amsterdam in 1766) was probably only partial and merely a few traces remain of it in quotations of that time, to the point that we have not the text nor do we know its exact date (between 1766 and 1780). As for the second translation (which was completed in 1784, based on the second French translation published that year in Geneva), it has unfortunately remained manuscript until 2014. Therefore, the first modern Spanish version of the History of the Art of Antiquity was released much later than in other linguistic areas and appeared only in 1955, thanks to Manuel Tamayo Benito, translator in Spanish also of Goethe and Schiller. Only recent versions in Spanish exist of several other works by Winckelmann.

Nevertheless, talking about Winckelmann's legacy in Spain (and, more generally, in the Spanish-speaking world, for example in Mexico) is highly relevant for understanding the course of European art literature. This blog has in fact hosted a series of book reviews and articles both on Spanish art authors between 1600 and 1800 (think of the recent review on the works of Juan Augustín Ceán Bermúdez (1749-1829) and on the impact of Johann Joachim Winckelmann on the taste and the theory of art in the eighteenth century. Reading the proceedings of the 2011 Madrid conference (published in a Spanish-German bilingual edition) allows crossing these two avenues of scholaship, discovering new perspectives and, more importantly, the existence of highly divergent interpretations.

Fig. 2) The first modern Spanish translation (1955) of the History of Art in Antiquity by Johann Joachim Winckelmann, edited by Manuel Tamayo Benito and published by Aguilar publishers in Madrid. The work, which also contains Winckelmann's Remarks on the Architecture of the Ancients, was later reprinted (1989, 1999 and 2002) by Aguilar in Madrid and by Orbis in Barcelona.

The issue of the reception of Winckelmann's thinking in Spain is complex and controversial. With the success of his writings throughout Europe, Johann Joachim consolidated the success of an extreme anti-Baroque aesthetic movement, inspired by both the concept of "good taste" and the recovery of the ancient. He triggered, in many respects, a diminution of much of the Spanish artistic tradition of the Golden Age. The teaching of Winckelmann - influencing both the aesthetic thought of the above mentioned Ceán Bermúdez and the preferences of the most enlightened politician of that time, namely Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos (1744-1811) – helped to consolidate a tendency towards the establishment of neoclassical taste also in the Iberian peninsula (and, through Madrid, also in Latin America).

Fig. 3) On the left: Anton Raphael Mengs, Portrait of Charles III of Bourbon, 1765 ca. Source: Wikimedia Commons. On the right: Louis Silvestre, Portrait of Maria Amalia of Saxony, 1738. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

To be clear: the spreading of neoclassical culture across Spain was most probably not so much due to the circulation of the writings of artists and connoisseurs, but materialised above all against the background of geopolitical events. Precisely when neoclassicism made its appearance as a new vision of the ancient, Charles of Bourbon (1716-1788), king of Naples and Sicily, and his wife Maria Amalia of Saxony (1724-1760), settled in Madrid (1759). There, the former assumed the throne as Charles III, reigning over Spain until 1788. Charles III was the monarch who - in the Italian peninsula - had started the excavations of Herculaneum and Pompeii and brought the Farnese collection to Naples, earning himself the name of the 'archaelogist king'. Also back in Spain he promoted collections of ancient statuary, in line with the acquisition in Madrid of the collection of five hundred marbles of Christine of Sweden by his father Philip V in 1724. The wife of Charles III, Maria Amalia of Saxony, was a very cultivated woman. She came from Dresden, where in those decades the House of Saxony (which also controlled Poland and Lithuania) pursued a policy of importing Italian art collections (as well as the classical Italian style, as an alternative to the French rococo) as a form of aesthetic legitimization of the new power. Arrived in Naples, Maria Amalia promoted in a few years magnificent architectural works (the Royal Theatre of Saint Charles, the Royal Palace of Capodimonte, the Royal Palace of Caserta). Charles and Maria Amalia (who died soon after arriving in Spain) attracted to Madrid, as a court painter, Anton Raphael Mengs (1728–1779). The latter developed the same neoclassical culture as Winckelmann and proved to be a man of enormous influence in Madrid (despite the periodic difficulties to which he was exposed as a foreign artist). Mengs, Winckelmann and Maria Amalia were all expressions of the transfer of the same neoclassical culture from Saxony to Italy.

Fig. 4) On the left: Anton Raphael Mengs, Portrait of José Nicolás de Azara, 1774. Source: Wikimedia Commons. On the right: Francisco Goya, Portrait of Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos, 1782-1785. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

In other words, Winckelmann's legacy was spreading in Spain both through direct and indirect channels: in some cases, the Italian and French success of his thought reverberated in the Iberian peninsula, in others the neoclassicism of Neapolitan origin was accepted independently of the influence of the German scholar (or even despite his dislike for Spanish culture). Opening the proceedings, Martin Almagro-Gorbea, on behalf of one of the promoters (the "Royal Academy of History") used emphatic tones: "Furthermore, traditional historiography seems to have only recently understood the continuity of the fascinating relations between Charles VII of Naples (the future Charles III of Spain) and the circle of Johann Joachim Winckelmann. Charles III’s liaison with the Court of Saxony is evident. Introduced by Amalia of Saxony, Antón Rafael Mengs arrived from there, becoming the court painter and the promoter of neoclassicism in the Spanish court and, through it, in society. Thus, through Mengs, in fact, the ideas of J.J. Winckelmann made a triumphal entry into Spain and, from there, into Latin America" [1]. Almagro-Gorbea also invited all of us to overcome what he termed as a rather ‘Manichean’ traditional historiographical position, which would mark an artificial partition between Central European and Protestant Germanic Europe on the one hand, and Latin Catholic Europe on the northern shore of the Mediterranean on the other hand. The relations between Charles III and Winckelmann, between José Nicolás de Azara (1730-1804) i.e. the Spanish diplomat in Rome, Mengs and Winckelmann would instead witness a fruitful relationship of cultural contamination.

The emphasis of the tones in the introductory page of the proceedings, however, hides (as we shall see) the existence of highly divergent opinions on the subject. The reading of the volume illustrates how parallel narratives can make it difficult to read historical phenomena when, by themselves, they are full of ambiguity.

Fig. 5) The Madrid colloquium of June 2017

Finally, let me point out for sake of completeness, that, on the same topics discussed at the conference in Madrid in 2011, a (indeed very short) colloquium was organized by the German Archaeological Institute in the same city in 2011 on the occasion of the three hundredth anniversary of Winckelmann's birth. It is difficult to say whether this second event marked a new flow of research on the topic, or illustrated the same points of the previous conference.

I would now like to present the list of the articles and comment briefly on some of them.

List of the articles in the conference proceedings

• Jorge Maier Allende - The reception of Winckelmann in Spain;
• Alejandro Martínez - The fortune of Winckelmann's work in Spain: the translation of the History of Art of Antiquity by Diego Antonio Rejón de Silva;
• Eric M. Moormann - On the transposition of the findings from the Bourbon excavations in Herculaneum and Pompeii in Winckelmann's History of Art of Antiquity;
• Rosaria Ciardiello - Winckelmann and the acknowledgment of the discoveries of Herculaneum and Pompeii in European art;
• Jorge García Sánchez - The Spaniards and the antiquities in Winckelmann's Rome;
• Miguel Ángel Elvira Barba - Winckelmann, Mengs and Azara’s sculpture collections;
• Almudena Negrete Plano - The apostles of good taste in Madrid: Meng’s collection of plaster casts in the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando;
• Sebastian Neumeister - With Winckelmann's eyes in the Royal Palace of Madrid. A letter from Anton Raphael Mengs;
• Ralf-Torsten Speler - The artistic relations between the Bourbon realm of Naples and the illuminated principality of Anhalt-Dessau in the 18th century;
• Axel Rügler - The Ildefonso Group in Winckelmann's unpublished ancient monuments;
• Brigitte Schmitz - Portrait / Model - the Group of Ildefonso in German art;
• Salvador Mas - Winckelmann and the transposition of the classical legacy in the 16th-18th century Spain, with an appendix on Winckelmann and Jovellanos;
• Volker Riedel - Huarte, Montiano and Coello. Spanish influences on the work of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing;
• Markus Bernauer - "But they lack the natural and the imitation of the ancients ...". The first German classicism and art in Spain;
• Eva Hofstetter - The two "Raffaellos" - Raphael Mengs and the other artists in children's literature in Germany between the 19th and the 21st century;
• Maria Fancelli - What are the reasons for a new (Italian) edition of Winckelmann's letters?;
• Adolf H. Borbein - Winckelmann's historical-critical edition;
• Max Kunze - Studies on Winckelmann: new projects of the Winckelmann Society.

Jorge Maier Allende - The reception of Winckelmann in Spain

The archaeologist Maier Allende (1961-) was one of the promoters of the Madrid conference. Over the last years, he has authored an enormous amount of studies and initiatives on the history of archaeology in Spain, but also on the Spanish artistic literature of the eighteenth century, as a moment of transposition of antiquity. For example, Maier Allende published the sections on antiquity in the archives of the Real Academia de la Historia in 2008 and the Viaje de las antigüedades de España by Luis José Velázquez de Velasco, in 2015.

At the centre of the conference, Maier Allende put a fundamental question, which goes beyond the figure of Winckelmann: did Neoclassicism and the rediscovery of the antuiquity impose themselves in Spain as a movement from below, and therefore as a manifestation of a new taste of the public, or as a process governed from the top, i.e. an expression of the desire for renewal of an enlightened elite within the court? [2]

Fig. 6) Francesco Sabatini, Puerta de Alcalá, 1769-1778. Source: Wikimedia Commons

In reality, Maier Allende was inclined towards the second thesis. In his view, the Spanish culture was still deeply immersed in the Baroque, when it was suddendly hit by an exogeneous neoclassical "shock" from outside the country. It was therefore a cultural shift that, in many ways, could be called octroyée, to use a French expression: it was planned and imposed from the élites. The origin of this impulse was first of all the decision of Philip V (the first of the rulers of the House of Bourbon) to renew the court culture, on the occasion of his (second) marriage to Elisabetta Farnese in 1724 (in correspondence with which he acquired, as already mentioned, the collection of Cristina of Sweden). The same avenue was confirmed, and indeed reinforced, by their first-born son Charles III, who (as Duke of Parma first and King of Naples and Sicily then) absorbed neoclassical culture in Italy before he had even established himself as a monarch in Madrid.

Fig. 7) José del Castillo, The Priarie of San Isidro, 1785

Maier Allende dwelled about Winckelmann's role in this process of "neo-classicization" of the Spanish world, placing the influence of the German scholar in a broader framework of aesthetic renewal. Success of archaeology, aesthetic revolution and philosophical reflection - the author wrote - were three aspects of the same movement, which had as its reference the concept of "Buen Gusto" (which in Spain had a real political value of national revival, after the years of crisis at the intersection of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries). In reality, Maier Allende explained that the notion of 'good taste' was dating back to the years of the Spanish Baroque, since it was first elaborated by Baltasar Gracián (1601-1658), and then exported to France, Italy and Germany (for example, in Italy it would be adopted by Ludovico Antonio Muratori). The project of reviving arts under inspiration of antiquity (and Renaissance) had two fundamental milestones in 1738 and 1752, when Philip V established the Real Academia de la Historia and the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando. The concept of "good taste", Maier Allende continued, was reimported to Spain from Italy thanks to the Spanish success of Muratori, acquiring immediately an anti-baroque meaning. This orientation was strengthened in the second half of the century: if at first the ideal of 'good taste' overlapped with the aesthetic preferences of late-Baroque Roman classicism, later the Hellenic world became the compass needle (thus revealing Winckelmann’s influence) [3].

Fig. 8) Juan de Villanueva, Astronomical Observatory of Madrid, 1790. Source: Wikimedia Commons

The principle of "good taste" soon assumed a double, didactic and doctrinal, meaning. In its name, everything belonging to the seventeenth century fell ever more in disgrace. In educational terms, 'good taste' also imposed in Spain the renewal of the study of antiquity according to scientific principles of "quality, accuracy and precision" [4]: part of the modern learning of the study of (ancient and modern) art now consisted on the one hand in traveling to Italy, in order to be able to observe first-hand works, on the other hand in publishing Renaissance manuscripts in order to rediscover the aesthetic preferences of the sixteenth century. In doctrinal terms, with the publication of the Thoughts on the Imitation of Greek Works in Painting and Sculpture by Winckelmann in 1755 and the arrival of Mengs in Madrid (1761) "good taste" became a comprehensive criterion of ("formal, technical and aesthetic” [5]) interpretation of the work of art.

Winckelmann - Maier Allende wrote - was by no means a stranger in Spain and must have had relations with some of the greatest artists and writers of art of the time in the country. To say the truth, the Spanish scholar himself added to have found very little documentary evidence of those direct contacts. Certainly Johann Joachim met the painter Antonio Ponz (1725 - 1792), author in the following decades of a fortunate Journey through Spain which, however, did not contain any reference to Johann Joachim, even if it propagated the idea of ​​"good taste". Historiography, on the other hand, was very focused on the relationship between Winckemann and the aforementioned intellectual, politician and collector José Nicolás de Azara (although Maier Allende wrote that their acquaintance in Rome must have been most probably by far more superficial than one might think, as it never involved written correspondence). What is certain is that José Nicolás would be later on fundamental for the success of neoclassicism in Spain (but also elsewhere): among other things, he took care of and financed the edition of all the writings of Mengs in Italian and Spanish (in both cases in 1780), French (1786) and English (1796); to Azara was also dedicated the publication of the second Italian translation of ​​ Winckelmann’s History of the Art of Drawing among the Ancients by Carlo Fea.

Maier Allende then proposed (in a list of possible Spanish counterparts of Winckelmann) a series of Spaniards who found themselves in Rome in those years and who could have crossed the German scholar, even though there is no historical evidence of that meeting. They encompassed the architects Juan de Villanueva (1739-1811) and Domingo Lois Monteagudo (1723-1786) and the painters Francisco Preciado de la Vega (1712–1789) and José del Castillo (1737–1793). Especially the latter - Maier Allende wrote - must have met Johann Joachim as a member of the Academy of Saint Luke. They were due to become the major exponents of Spanish neoclassicism in the years directly following the death of Johann Joachim in 1768.

Fig. 9) On the left: Antonio Ponz, The Journey through Spain, 1785. Source: Wikimedia Commons. On the right: Preciado de la Vega, Francisco, Arcadia pictórica en sueño: Alegoría ó poema prosaico sobre la teoría y práctica de la pintura, 1789

However, the main transmission channel in Spain of Winckelmann's thought was Mengs, during his stays in Spain in 1761-1769 and in 1774-1777. Mengs was particularly close to Pedro Rodríguez Campomanes (1723-1802), the Enlightenment intellectual and politician (he was the finance minister of the kingdom) and the director of the Academy of History. However, there are also indications of a direct influence of Winckelmann's ideas, thanks to the circulation of the Italian and French versions of his works (in particular The History of Art in Antiquity) in Spanish libraries. Starting from 1770-1780 - the author continued - the influence of his ideas became visible in Spanish culture thanks to Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos and his circle.

Fig. 10) Juan de Villanueva, Project for the Natural History Cabinet of Madrid (today Museo del Prado), 1785. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Jovellanos, an Enlightenment politician and intellectual, approached the fine arts as early as his studies in Sevilla (1768-1778). In his youth he quoted, in his Eulogy of Fine Arts (1780), Antonio Capmany's translation of the History of the art of Antiquity by Johann Joachim. The Eulogy was a discourse on the need to give a new reading of the history of Spanish art, based on the teaching of Winckelmann and Mengs. Eight years later, in 1788, in his Praise of Ventura Rodríguez, Jovellanos extended the same concepts to architecture, paying tribute to the neoclassical Ventura Rodríguez Tizón (1717–1785). Maier Allende wrote that this was one of the first attempts to extend Winckelmann's concepts of style even to the Middle Ages.

According to Maier Allende, Winckelmann's teaching extended from Jovellanos to Céan Bermúdez, "one of his students and best collaborators" [6].  Jovellanos urged him to use Winckelmann's teaching in his works. The Dialogues of 1822 (and in particular the Dialogue on the origin, forms and progress of Sculpture in the nations before the Greeks) particularly reflected Bermúdez’s knowledge of the German scholar. The ideas of Johann Joachim also left traces in the writings of other scholars and scholars: the Noticias de los arquitectos y arquitectura de España desde su restauracion by Eugenio Llaguno (1724-1799), published posthumously in 1829; the Comentarios de la Pintura, que escribió Don Felipe de Guevara in 1788; and the Observaciones sobre las Bellas Artes entro los antiguos hasta la conquista de Grecia por los Romanos by Isidoro Bosarte (1790-1791).

Fig. 11) On the left: Ventura Rodríguez, Drawing of the facade of the Cathedral of Pamplona, 1782. On the right: Santos Ángel de Ochandátegui, Facade of the Cathedral of Pamplona, designed by Ventura Rodríguez, 1782-1804

Salvador Mas – Winckelmann and the transposition of the classical legacy in the 16th-18th century Spain, with an appendix on Winckelmann and Jovellanos

Discussing the aforementioned essay by Jorge Maier Allende, Salvador Mas Torres (1959-) held a real adversarial speech. Many things distinguished the two. While Maier Allende, as a historian of archaeology, considered the influence of Winckelmann above all from the point of view of the renewal of the study of antiquity, Mas developed the theme of Winckelmann’s influence on the Spanish history of ideas, in line with his background as philosopher and historian of aesthetics. The first scholar considered Winckelmann's empirical impact among archaeologists and art historians, while the second considered his legacy "from a theoretical perspective" [7]. For Maier Allende, it was fundamental to understand if and how the History of Art in Antiquity changed the way of thinking of Spanish art scholars. To the contrary, Mas felt the need to clarify whether the Gedanken über die Nachahmung der griechischen Werke in der Malerei und Bildhauerkunst of 1755 (or "The Thoughts on the Imitation of Greek works in Painting and Sculpture") had in Spain an impact or not on the way of thinking the relationship between the present and the ancient world, and not only about art. It should immediately be said that Mas himself published, in a Spanish version, the Reflexiones sobre la imitación de las obras griegas en la pintura y la escultura in 2008 (the second Spanish version of Winckelmann's writing after the one already appeared in 1998 by Vicente Jarque and Ludwig Uhlig).

Fig. 12) On the left, the Spanish translation of the Thoughts on Imitation of 2008 by Salvador Mas. On the right, the English translation by Elfriede Heyer and Roger C. Norton, published in 1986 by Open Court (also with the German text)

Mas began his article claiming to have come to opposite conclusions to those of Maier Allende: if the latter considered the legacy of Winckelmann as "crucial" (in Spanish and German terms: decisiva-entscheidend) to understand the success of Neoclassicism in Spain, the former thought instead that his influence was "limited" (poca-gering), pointing, rather, to a mutual disinterest. "Winckelmann had no great opinion of the rich Spanish tradition, either intellectual or artistic” [8]. Beyond the ancient world, his interest in art was concentrated on Italy (and, to a lesser extent, on France and the Netherlands). With the exception of some allusions to the collections of Charles III, the references to Spain in his writings were very limited and often critical. As to the interest of the Spanish culture of the time in Winckelmann, Mas contended that the German scholar may have really been associated with Spanish personalities in Rome. Moreover, Mas did not consider the  circulation of his books in Spanish libraries as an indication of a real reception. To the contrary, he stressed that the two handwritten translations of the History of Art in Antiquity had remained unpublished, indicating a substantial indifference of the local cultural environments [9]. As for the fortune in Spain of neoclassicism, he underlined how all the great Spanish neoclassical sculptors of the next generation (José Álvarez Cubero (1768–1827), Damián Campeny (1771-1855) and Antonio Solá) lived most of their lives in France and Italy, remaining alien to Spain.

Fig. 13) On the left: José Álvarez Cubero, Maria Isabella of Braganza, 1826. Source: Wikimedia Commons. In the centre: Damián Campeny, Clemenza or Pace, 1827. Source: Wikimedia Commons. On the right: Antonio Solá, The massacre of the innocents, 1834

How to explain this mutual absence of empathy? According to Mas, it crucially depended on the important political implications of Winckelmann's thought, which Johann Joachim himself considered fundamental for a complete understanding of his theories. The political implications became immediately evident in France and Germany (i.e. the countries in Europe where the influence of Johann Joachim’s thought was fundamental). The German scholar was a supporter of republican freedoms and conceived his anger against the Baroque (and the wish to return to antiquity) as a liberation movement from the Ancien Régime. The tension between noble simplicity and quiet greatness (these were the two fundamental terms of his aesthetic thought) translated, in politics, into the corresponding tension between political liberty and individual sense of freedom in the choices of life. In the Rome of Cardinal Albani and of the popes Clement XII and Benedict XIV (or in an environment certainly not characterized by political liberty in the republican sense), Winckelmann was nevertheless breathing an air of great freedom, which was the consequence of a practice of great tolerance, combined with a very high culture. Spain, our author argued, was instead still dominated by absolutism and a retrograde and ignorant church [10]. According to Mas, this was not a simple bigotry: the author spent many pages to clarify that the entire development of Spanish philosophy in previous centuries - strongly characterized by the influence of Seneca's stoicism - did not allow the Iberian culture of those years to really open to freedom, because it made individual salvation depend exclusively on the afterlife. There was no reason to give citizens any freedom, as they would be simply condemned to an inevitable eternal damnation.

Fig. 14) Francisco Cabezas, Antonio Pló and Francesco Sabatini, Facade of the Royal Basilica of St. Francis the Great, 1761-1784

In other words, when Winckelmann studied the arts and customs of the ancient world, he valued antiquity because the Greeks were enjoying individual margins of freedom to everybody (even when power was exercised in a dictatorial way). To the contrary, none of the artists and scholars who were inspired by his stylistic conceptions in Spain ever expressed similar beliefs or feelings. For Johann Joachim, it was fundamental to look at antiquity as a different world from the current one (and I would like to add, perhaps this is the intellectual reason for which he substantially ignored the art of his time); he certainly accepted the most inconvenient aspects of the ancient world - such as slavery and gratuitous episodes of violence - because for him the finality of imitation of the ancients was always and only achieving in his days the liberation of the individual from the constraints of the present. On the contrary, the Spanish scholars who read Winckelmann sought above all similarities between the ancient world and Christianity, as a form of legitimation of the present world; their ideology legitimized the power of the church, based on punishment, as a modern transfiguration of the violent exercise of power in the past [11]. 

Fig. 15) The Eulogy of Fine Arts by Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos, in a 2014 version edited by Javier Portús Pérez (Casimiro Libros editions)

The only exception might have perhaps been - at least according to Maier Allende - that Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos, the Enlightenment-oriented intellectual and politician, who in the Eulogy of Fine Arts of 1782 offered a synthetic history of Spanish art for styles (and not for biographies), therefore following Winckelmann’s model [12]. But even here Mas revealed completely divergent opinions from Maier Allende: even if it were proved that Jovellanos read the (unconfirmed) Spanish translation by Winckelmann by Antonio Capmany, he did not understand it. After all, Jovellanos was not an art historian but a politician who dealt with almost the whole field of knowledge [13].  According to Mas, it was actually Céan Bermúdez who inspired his interest in art (for a completely different interpretation, see in this post the review on the volume on Céan Bermúdez edited Elena Maria Santiago Páez).  And certainly - Mas added - Jovellanos made very little convinced references to the theses of Johann Joachim, whom probably he knew indirectly only thanks to the interaction with Mengs, Azara and Ponz [14].

Fig. 16) Anton Raphael Mengs, Noli me tangere, 1769. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Even the Eulogy was not at all a text capable of presenting a periodization of the history of Spanish art, but simply a speech of an exclusively rhetorical nature that included the presentation of some sporadic insights on the history of art: the disruption of Gothic art, the revival of Andalusian painting in the 1500s, the ruin of art after Velázquez (which Jovellanos considered the culmination of the Spanish artistic parable) and the admiration for Mengs as a rediscoverer of the arts. Concepts such as the cyclical nature of art (through a mechanism of birth-development-decline of clear physiological origin) and the ‘good taste’ would belong to the clichés of the time and not necessarily originate in Winckelmann's reading. Good taste was a concept already present in Latin rhetoric, and many of the concepts used were already present in Bellori.

Fig. 17) Francisco Gutiérrez, Roberto Michel, Miguel Ximénez and Ventura Rodríguez, The fountain of Cybele, 1777-1782. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Also the 'Eulogy of Ventura Rodríguez’ of 1788 should actually not be considered, as Maier-Allende did, a programmatic text inaugurating the history of Spanish architecture. Actually, Rodríguez practiced a 'still rococo classicism’ [15] which would soon be liquidated by Charles III, appealing to the Italian Francesco Sabatini. Here the majority of Jovellanos' critical considerations could be found only in the footnotes. There were indeed some interesting cues (for example on the origin of the Gothic), but only one page was dedicated to the Renaissance architecture; obviously, there was only incomprehension towards (and, indeed, a real acrimony against) the Baroque [16].  Thus, Mas concluded, it was a polemical text and not a scientific attempt to reconstruct the history of Spanish architecture by style.

End of Part One
Go to Part Two 

NOTES

[1] El Legado de Johann Joachim Winckelmann en España /Das Vermächtnis von Johann Joachim Winckelmann in Spanien [The legacy of Johann Joachim Winckelmann in Spain], Proceedings of the international conference in Madrid (20-21 October 2011, edited by Max Kunze and Jorge Maier Allende. Mainz and Ruhpolding, Verlag Franz Philipp Rutzen, 2013, 314 pages. Quotation at page 13.

[2] El Legado de Johann Joachim Winckelmann en España (quoted), p. 37.

[3] El Legado de Johann Joachim Winckelmann en España (quoted), p. 37.

[4] El Legado de Johann Joachim Winckelmann en España (quoted), p. 39.

[5] El Legado de Johann Joachim Winckelmann en España (quoted), p. 40.

[6] El Legado de Johann Joachim Winckelmann en España (quoted), p. 44.

[7] El Legado de Johann Joachim Winckelmann en España (quoted), p. 237.

[8] El Legado de Johann Joachim Winckelmann en España (quoted), p. 238.

[9] El Legado de Johann Joachim Winckelmann en España (quoted), p. 237.

[10] El Legado de Johann Joachim Winckelmann en España (quoted), p. 238.

[11] El Legado de Johann Joachim Winckelmann en España (quoted), p. 240.

[12] El Legado de Johann Joachim Winckelmann en España (quoted), p. 242.

[13] El Legado de Johann Joachim Winckelmann en España (quoted), p. 243.

[14] El Legado de Johann Joachim Winckelmann en España (quoted), p. 251.

[15] El Legado de Johann Joachim Winckelmann en España (quoted), p. 244.

[16] El Legado de Johann Joachim Winckelmann en España (quoted), p. 245.