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

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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 Two

Fig. 18) The Spanish version of Winckelmann's History of Art of the Ancients, translated from French to Spanish by Diego Antonio Rejón de Silva in 1784, and published by the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando in 2014

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We are continuing the review of the most interesting contributions in the publication of the conference proceedings on "The Legacy of Johann Joachim Winckelmann in Spain", held in Madrid in October 2011.

Alejandro Martínez - The fortune of Winckelmann's work in Spain: the translation of the History of Art Among the Ancients by Diego Antonio Rejón de Silva

The essay by the art historian Alejandro Martínez, a fecund scholar of the aesthetics in the Iberian world of the eighteenth century, is dedicated to the Spanish translation of the History of Art Among the Ancients, completed by Diego Antonio Rejón de Silva (1754-1796) and never published (according to the author of the essay, the translator soon realized that the censorship would have prevented the text from being placed on the market). The manuscript has been preserved in the library of the Real Academia de Bellas Artes since 1797, the year in which the widow of Rejón de Silva forwarded it to the institution of which her husband was an honorary member since 1780. The translation was dated 1784 (it is not clear however if the date refers to the beginning or conclusion of the same [17]). We have already mentioned that the present Spanish version was based on the second French translation of Winckelmann's work (edited by Michel Huber and published in Geneva in 1784). With Rejón (painter, art writer and official in the art academies, after a past as a volunteer soldier in some colonial wars in North Africa), we meet one of the protagonists of the spread of foreign art literature in Spain, as he translated and published in a single volume, also in 1784, Leonardo's Treatise on Painting and that of Leon Battista Alberti. Both Leonardo and Alberti were translated into Spanish from French (in the edition edited by Rafael Trichet Du Fresne in 1651, who also presented both of them). So, in fact, at the same time, Rejón was aiming to make available to his compatriots the texts of Leonardo, Alberti and Winckelmann, always passing through the intermediation of the French language: the first two works were published, the last wasn’t.

Fig. 19) On the left: The edition of Winckelmann's History of Art in Antiquity by Manuel Tamayo Benito (published by Aguilar in Madrid in 1955 and then reprinted in 2002). The volume also includes the "Observations on the architecture of the ancients" and a critical essay by Goethe. At the centre: The edition of Herminia Dauer, with an introductory essay by Emiliano M Aguilera, published by Iberia in Barcelona in 1967 and since then subject to numerous reprints (1984, 1994, 2000, 2004). On the right: The edition by Joaquín Chamoro Mielke, published by Editorial: Ediciones Akal, S.A. in Madrid in 2011.

While Rejón was not the first Spanish translator (Antonio Capmany had already produced a now lost Spanish text, based this time on the first French translation of 1766), we must be grateful to him for the most important effort to spread the thought of the German scholar in Spain in the eighteenth century. With the attempts of Capmany and Rejón exhausted, throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries Spain did not have a national language version until 1955, with the edition edited by Manuel Tamayo Benito. From that date the translations multiplied (Herminia Dauer in 1994 and Joaquín Chamoro Mielke in 2011). In 2014 the version of Rejón was recovered and finally published, under the auspices of the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando.

Fig. 20) On the left: the Spanish translation of the treaties on painting by Leonardo and Leon Battista Alberti, edited by Diego Antonio Rejón de Silva (published in Madrid in 1784). On the right: the facsimile version of the Dictionary of Noble Arts for the Learning of Enthusiasts and Professors by Diego Antonio Rejón de Silva, originally published in 1788 and recently republished by the Fundación Cultural COAM of Madrid in 1995.

In the context of his production of artistic literature, it must be remembered that, with a very similar behaviour to other foreign academics, Réjon also published a didactic poem on Painting in 1786, and a Dictionary of Noble Arts for the learning of enthusiasts and professors in 1788. Finally he prepared a compendium of Palomino’s Pictorial Museum or Scala Ottica, which however was never published. Martínez wrote that, as the will of the scholar shows, he owned a collection of more than 250 volumes related to art writers, be they Spanish or French. Certainly, our Spanish translator had clear-cut views and did not hide them. It is not by chance that he suffered a severe setback in 1792 when, for political reasons, he was dismissed from all the academic positions in Madrid and had to retire in the province, in Murcia, where he died four years later, just forty-two years old. He paid for supporting the Count of Floridablanca (1728-1808) against the winning faction of the Aragonesi, in the years of political confusion immediately following the French Revolution.

Fig. 21) Left: Pompeo Batoni, Portrait of Don José Moñino y Redondo, Count de Floridablanca, 1776. Source: Wikimedia Commons. Right: Francisco Goya, Portrait of José Moñino count of Floridablanca, 1783. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

Rejón's approach to Winckelmann was not uncritical. He considered the History of Art Among the Ancients as a true manifesto of neoclassicism and a work of great significance in didactic terms, but did not appreciate the subsequent writings of the German, which he considered an expression of pure erudition [18]. The Spanish scholar strived for an edition of the text that would not only be commented with philological notes, but would also discuss the author's aesthetic theses [19]. For this Rejón prepared an afterword to Winckelmann's text, in which he addressed general themes, re-elaborating theses widespread in his time: the difference between Nordic peoples, inclined to science (Netwon and Leibniz) and Southern peoples (to which Italy and Spain belonged), inclined instead to the creation of art; the spontaneously classical orientation of the latter (strangely represented - in his opinion - by the Bohemian Mengs, i.e. a "northener" who was "southernized" by him), while Flemish and Dutch would be naturally less sensitive to the classical world and the French would constitute a world apart [20]; the difference between natural beauty and ideal beauty, and the role of proportion as a theoretical element of neoclassicism [21]. 

Why was the text eventually not published? It is a very complex subject. Certainly the attempt of a Spanish translation took place at a time when the interest in the writings of the theoreticians of the early neoclassicism was enormous, in the framework of what was called "anticomania”, the fanatic interest for everything antique [22]. However – as Martínez wrote – neoclassical art lovers in Spain might have diverted their interest towards the works of Mengs (such as the Thoughts on beauty and taste in painting 1762), for obvious reasons linked to his stay in Madrid. Already in 1780 José Nicolás de Azara had financed the publication of all the works of Mengs (later re-proposed to the Spanish public in a new edition already in 1797).

Martínez, however, was inclined towards a second hypothesis. Winckelmann would have been considered in the Spanish world not only as a reformer of good taste, but as a true revolutionary writer, whose ultimate goal was to destroy the legitimacy of the Ancien Régime [23]. In those years the Spanish censorship intervened systematically to isolate the society from external influences, considered dangerous. In this context, Rejón possibly expected that the publication of the text be never authorized and could have resigned to wait. His untimely death in 1792 made all forget his efforts until this day.

Jorge García Sánchez – The Spaniards and the antiquities in Winckelmann's Rome

With his extensive essay the archaeologist and historian of the study of antiquity Jorge García Sánchez, active at the Complutense University of Madrid, guided us among the Spanish travellers and residents of the eighteenth century in Rome, a topic to which he has reserved numerous articles. This was a community that, according to contrasting interpretations, Winckelmann might have attended or ignored in the thirteen years spent in Rome, between 1755 and 1768. And, according to Sánchez, the reality is clear: Spaniards played a secondary role in Winckelmann’s Roman life.

Fig. 22) On the left: Antonio Ponz, Madonna del Carmine, without date. Source: Wikimedia Commons. On the right: Antonio Ponz, Portrait of Antonio Pérez, secretary of King Philip II, without date. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

The only documented Spanish acquaintance by Johann Joachim was that with Antonio Ponz (1725 - 1792), engraver, portraitist and religious painter present in Rome between 1751 and 1759, but much more famous for his Viaje de Espana (Journey around Spain) in eighteen volumes, published in 1772 and 1794. Ponz probably knew Winckelmann thanks to his common acquaintance with Mengs and Giovanni Battista Casanova (1730-1795). While he was a mediocre artist (and curiously one revealing a baroque-rococo taste, and therefore preferring a very different style from the one of Winckelmann), Ponz was nevertheless a man of methodical spirit and interested in aesthetic questions [24]. Unfortunately, Sánchez did not add much to the terms of the relationship between the German scholar and the Spanish painter.

Fig. 23) On the left: Volume XIV of the Journey through Spain by Antonio Ponz, published in 1787 (and dedicated to Catalonia). On the right the first volume of the Italian translation by Antonio Conca (1793)

Winckelmann - it has been said – was not frequenting the Spanish community in the Rome of those years; this does not mean that the Spanish circles had a secondary role in the city. It is a myth to debunk - Sánchez wrote - that the Spaniards were not interested in the Italian peninsula. However, compared to other nationalities, it was not young nobles, but rather “artists, religious, cheaters, graduates, writers, adventurers, refugees, artisans or other technicians, soldiers, etc.” [25] who travelled to Italy. Despite the multiplicity of origins and ambitions, the interest and taste of many Spaniards coincided with that of other nationalities: “the interest in classical antiquities in all their forms, whether it was the study of language or history, the research on monuments or the observation of the material culture of an era, or the collection of works of art with the aim of cataloguing, conserving or imitating them” [26]. And the art students in Rome, following the instructions of Mengs, dedicated themselves to copying the ancient sculptures, both inspired by the originals and by the plaster models [27]. Even for the Spaniards active in Rome, imitation and rational analysis became - as Sánchez wrote - the basis of a new archetype.

Fig. 24) On the left, the Spanish translation of the Ten Books on Architecture by Vitruvius, curated by José Ortiz y Sanz (1787). Source: https://archive.org/details/A065112/page/n7. On the right, the Spanish translation of the Four books on architecture by Andrea Palladio, published by José Ortiz y Sanz in 1797. Source: https://archive.org/details/HArteR09T11/page/n4

It was mainly architects who moved towards Italy (in the Spanish case they were religious) [28]. Let us consider, for example, José Ortiz y Sanz (1739-1822), present in Rome between 1778 and 1784; he studied the Roman and Renaissance architectural tradition in the Vatican library as well as in the Roman countryside, first publishing Vitruvius’ Spanish translation in 1787 and then that of Palladio in 1797. Ortiz - who then produced the Institutions of Civil Architecture in 1819 - was surrounded in Rome by a handful of younger Spanish architects who helped him with measurements and reliefs, such as Manuel Martín Rodríguez (1751- 1823) and Ignacio Haan (1758-1810). Another architect, the Jesuit Pedro José Márquez (1741-1820), taught in Rome to the young fellows Isidro González Velázquez (1765-1840) and Louis-François Petit Radel (1739-1818), the latter a Frenchman, also guiding them in study trips out of town (1795) [29].

Fig. 25) Left: José Vergara Gimeno (attributed), Portrait of Manuel Martí, 1730-1760. Source: Wikimedia Commons. Right: Joaquín Inza, Portrait of Francisco Pérez Bayer, 1781. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Among the most educated Spanish travellers in those years Sánchez listed three other religious: Martí, Pérez Bayer and Andrés. The dean Manuel Martí (1663-1737) made his journey between 1717 and 1718, motivated by numismatic and antiquarian interests. For the canonical Francisco Pérez Bayer the "Erudite Peregrination" between 1754 and 1759 had as its objective the research, on behalf of King Ferdinand VI, of coins, but also of unpublished manuscripts and documents. Beginning in 1785 the abbot Juan Andrés (1740-1817) covered the whole of Italy (and stayed in particular in Rome) with the second Italian translation of the History of the art of drawing among the ancients by Winckelmann in the hands, just published by Carlo Fea, almost like a tour guide, telling his experiences in the Family Letters and using the terminology of the German scholar [30] The Spaniard (who arrived in Italy following the expulsion of the Jesuits from his homeland) was enthusiastic about contemporary Roman painting, which he compared to that of the Carraccis, Guido Reni and Raphael [31]. Andrés managed to be admitted in all good salons of Rome and acted as a Cicero for visitors. As Sanchez recalled, Andres defined contemporaneity as "the age of antiquity par excellence” [32], referring not only to Winckelmann, but also to Maffei, Montfaucon and Caylus. In Winckelmann he recognized not only a prominent scholar, but also an innovator of artistic taste linked to new political modules and ideals of Enlightenment [33]. Obviously, Andrés certainly did not make the acquaintance of Winckelmann, who had died tragically in 1768, but was very close to Ennio Quirino Visconti (1751–1818), his successor as Commissioner of Antiquities in Rome. The Spaniard also wrote to his brother about Roman encounters with some of his fellow countrymen in the city such as José Camarón y Bononat (1731-1803) and Carlos Espinosa y Moya (1759-1818).

Fig. 26) On the left: José Camarón y Bononat, The judgment of Paris, without date. Source: Wikimedia Commons. On the right: Anton Raphael Mengs, The Judgment of Paris, circa 1757

Among the many Jesuits expelled from Spain to Italy, Vicente Requeno (1743-1811) played a special role with his Essays on the restoration of the ancient art of the Greeks, and of the Roman painters, first published in Venice in 1784 and then (in an enlarged version in two volumes) in Parma in 1787. Sanchez explained how the work - dedicated to the recovery of ancient Roman painting in encaustic - had a remarkable success, influencing the works of Felice Giani (1758–1823), Angelika Kaufmann (1741-1807) and Cristoforo Unterperger (1732-1798). It was not just the work of a technician, but the expression of a "profound nostalgia of the exiled Jesuit for a renewed flowering of Greco-Roman art” [34]. 

Fig. 27) Vicente Requeno, Essays on the restoration of the ancient art of the Greeks, and of the Roman painters, in the second augmented edition of 1787

The most important of the Spanish travellers of art of that time, however, was Leandro Fernández de Moratín (1760-1828), author of the Journey to Italy, published posthumously in 1867, where he narrated his stay in our country between 1793 and 1796 [35]. Arrived in Italy with the aim of studying its dramaturgy, "from his arrival in Rome he turned his attention to art in all its forms. (...) The aristocratic collections seemed wonderful to him, but he criticized in a very harsh way the disorder and the preservation without scientific rules as «confused mass of beauty», in comparison with the way in which Winckelmann had organized the collection according to ages and styles, in order to promote learning to both experts and enthusiasts” [36]. Moratín revealed a clear neoclassical sensibility: classical antiquity was the only base on which architecture and sculpture could rest, and only the observation of ancient statues made it possible to understand the truth of art [37]. As for painting, he instead turned to Raphael, considering in fact the Roman images that he saw in Portici as completely inadequate in terms of “perspective, depth and shades of colour” [38] and considering the frescoes of Herculaneum an expression of the decadence of Roman art in the imperial era [39]. Roman paintings were therefore, in his opinion, important for the archaeological value, but (unlike architecture and sculpture) they were not able to represent an absolute value model for the art of the present.

Fig. 28) Left: Francisco Goya, Portrait of Leandro Fernández de Moratín, 1799. Source: Wikimedia Commons. Right: Francisco Goya, Portrait of Leandro Fernández de Moratín, 1824. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Some travellers also revealed an abysmal ignorance of art in their travel diaries. José Viera y Clavijo (1731-1813), a highly educated man on the subject of philosophy and social sciences, who also had access to the papal residences and collections of Azara and Cardinal Zelada between 1780 and 1781, was a real illiterate in art theme. The Venezuelan general Francisco de Miranda (1750-1816) fleeing from the inquisition found himself in Italy between 1785-1786 and showed an intuitive interested in painting in the underground of Rome. In contrast, the inquisitor Nicolás Rodríguez Laso (1747-1821), in Rome between 1788 and 1789, ignored many of the monuments he saw and confessed his ignorance in front of the most famous statues  preserved in the Vatican collections.

Fig. 29) Left: Isidro Carnicero y Joaquín José Fabregat, Portrait of Don José de Viera y Clavijo. 1784. Source: Wikimedia Commons. Right: Georges Rouget, General Francisco de Miranda as general of division of the northern army, 1792. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

This review of Spanish visitors in eighteenth century's Rome could not be completed without referring to four diverse personalities: the painter Francisco Preciado de la Vega (1713-1789), the diplomat and collector José Nicolás de Azara (1730 –1804), the cardinal patron Antonio Despuig y Dameto (1745-1813) and the philosopher and writer Esteban de Arteagas (1747–1799).

About Preciado de la Vega we can actually read very little in the essay by Antonio Sánchez, except that, in Rome, he was the 'director' of the pension of the Royal Academia de San Fernando for thirty years, from 1758 to 1789 (the year in which he publishes in Madrid the treatise on Arcadia Pictórica); therefore all the Spanish artists who went to Rome had to cope with him. In fact, Sánchez indirectly attributed to him the responsibility of having imposed on the students a narrow and repetitive curriculum of studies, without grasping the new cultural ferments of the Rome of those years [40]. As first secretary and then prince of the Academy of Saint Luke, Preciado de la Vega was, without doubt, a representative of tradition, rather than an innovator. As for the relations with Winckelmann, it seems to me interesting to note that portraits of both of them were made the same year by the same author (Anton von Maron); they were both depicted with a fur collar and a purple red dress. Finally, we should mention a letter of his about Spanish painting addressed to the Roman painter Giovanni Battista Ponfredi (1714-1795), signed 20 October 1765 and published by Bottari in the sixth volume of his Collection of letters on painting, sculpture, and architecture of 1768.

Fig. 30) On the left: Anton von Maron, Portrait of Francisco Preciado de la Vega, 1767 (the indication 1749 in the picture refers to the year in which Preciado was appointed an academic of San Luca). Source: Wikimedia Commons. On the right: Anton von Maron, Portrait of Johann Joachim Winckelmann, 1767. Source: Wikimedia Commons

As already written in the first part, the ambassador José Nicolás de Azara was one of the main cultural operators in support of the spread of neoclassical thought across Europe: Azara let translate all the writings of Mengs into Italian and Spanish (in both cases, in 1780) and encouraged the second Italian translation by Carlo Fea of Winckelmann's History of the Arts of Design of Ancients of Winckelmann in 1783. With his appointment as ambassador, the representative seat of the Spanish crown in Rome became - from the early 1780s - one of the key locations of aesthetic discussion in the city, and was frequented by exponents of Spanish and Italian culture. Azara gathered a collection of statues and a rich library in Rome, and constituted an academy to host Spanish artists in the city. When the Spanish scholar wrote about Winckelmann, he expressed mixed feelings. Certainly he had great respect, but considered him inferior to Mengs, who in his views had greatly influenced Johann Joachim’s views [41]. The friendship relationship between Azara and Mengs was recognized even in those decades (think of the Erma that portrayed them as soul mates).

Fig. 31) Giovanni Volpato, Erma with portraits of Anton Raphael Mengs and Josè Nicolas de Azara, 1786-1796

Cardinal Despuig travelled to Rome for the first time in 1782, twenty years before reaching the dignity of cardinals, already showing an interest in philology and archaeology. His appointment as a listener to the Sacred Rota offered him the possibility of multiplying his activities, directly financing archaeological excavations under the pontificate of Pius VI (1717-1799) and collecting a collection of marbles in Mallorca.

Fig. 32) Left: Pompeo Batoni, Portrait of Pope Pius VI, 1775. Source: Wikimedia Commons. Right: Pietro Bettelini, Portrait of Cardinal Antonio Despuig y Dameto, circa 1803. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

Esteban de Arteagas (another of the Jesuits expelled from Spain and an Azara’s protégée) dealt mainly with music, but his "Philosophical inquiries about the ideal beauty considered as object of the art of imitation" of 1789 was an essay of aesthetics which obviously was inspired by the thought of Winckelmann and Mengs (of the first he admired the aesthetics, of the second the metaphysics), while moving away from them in some aspects [42]. The concepts of ideal beauty and imitation, for example, were no longer seen as expressions of the artist's ability to reproduce parameters of beauty outside his own world of feelings: ideal beauty was instead the active product of the creator's inventiveness, based on his personal experiences and feelings.

In conclusion, Sánchez wrote: "Despite the obvious lack of documentary evidence creating a connection between Winckelmann and the Spanish personalities of his time, we have showed that many of the Spanish interests and behaviours corresponded to Winckelmann’s conception of the ancient and marked the sometimes very short stays of several representatives of art and literature of our country during their trip to the papal capital. Winckelmann's Rome was … a Spanish Rome” [43].

Miguel Ángel Elvira Barba – Winckelmann, Mengs and Azara’s sculpture collections

Fig. 33) Anton Raphael Mengs, Portrait of José Nicolás de Azara, 1774. Source: Wikimedia Commons

The historian and archaeologist Miguel Angel Elvira Barba (1950-) introduced us to the figure of the Aragonese José Nicolás de Azara both as a scholar and art promoter and as an archaeologist and collector. His career was linked to the coronation of Charles III as new king of Spain in 1759. His profile of educated and enlightened man supported his career: after having entered the diplomatic corps in 1760, he was assigned to maintain relations with the Roman curia in 1762. There is no evidence - Elvira Barba wrote - that in those years in Madrid he had already met Mengs, who arrived in the Spanish capital in 1761. In 1766 Azara made a great step in his career and was sent to Rome, where he conquered with his culture a central place in city life. Unlike what Sánchez wrote in the previous essay, Elvira Barba stated that Azara became acquainted with Winckelmann, superintendent of antiquities in Rome since 1764 [44]. However, their acquaintance was perhaps short and superficial, also due to the fact that they overlapped only few months in Rome [45]: already in 1767 the German went to Naples and Pompeii and a little later he left for Germany (a journey from which he would never return, being killed in Trieste in 1768). 

Fig. 34) Giacomo Bossi, Portrait of José Nicolás de Azara, taken from the portrait of Anton Raphael Mengs and the drawing by Bonaventura Salesa, 1784. Source: https://books.google.de/books?id=kUIjAUtIIjcC&printsec=frontcover&hl=it

It was instead with Mengs that a deeper relationship developed in the mid-1760s. In those years Azara achieved significant diplomatic successes: his support for the appointment of Pope Clement XIV in 1769 was decisive; he was critical for the latter's decision to dissolve the Society of Jesus in 1773 [46]. Mengs experienced complex events: he returned to Rome in 1771 also for health reasons, but was recalled to Madrid in 1773. Azara and Mengs had the opportunity of a long talk on aesthetic questions in Florence, while Mengs was already on the way back to Spain, and on that occasion their fraternal friendship was born, somehow sealed by the portrait of José Nicolás executed by Mengs. The two remained in permanent contact by letter, then they were in permanent contacts during the two years of Azara’s stay in Madrid. They would return to Rome in 1776 (Azara) and 1777 (Mengs) respectively.

Fig. 35) The hall of statues in the Pio Clementino museum. Source: Wikimedia Commons

The whole Rome (where Clement XIV founded a new archaeological museum in 1771, later expanded by his successor Pius VI, now known as Museo Pio-Clementino, and integrated into the Vatican Museums) was captured by an extraordinary interest in archaeology. Azara started archaeological excavations in the Villa Negroni in Rome (1777) and in the "Villa of Piso" in Tivoli (1779). Mengs helped him by drawing some of the finds from Villa Negroni. In Tivoli Azara discovered a bust of Alexander the Great (preserved today in the Louvre) which still bears the name of Erma of Azara, along with fourteen other portraits, some of which he attributed to pre-Socratic philosophers. As from then he decided to become a collector of Greek-Roman busts (and in particular busts of thinkers), many of which are found today in the Prado. The aforementioned Antonio Ponz provided us with a complete catalogue of the collection in 1788 (publishing it in the fourteenth volume of the Journey to Spain). Elvita Barba noted that the bust of philosophers was a genre to which neither Winckelmann nor Mengs had ever dedicated specific attention in their works, and therefore Azara displayed therefore an original sensitivity towards the ancient world [47].

Fig. 36) On the left: Bonaventura Salesa (drawing) and Pietro Fontana (engraving) of the bust of Carneade from the Azara collection, 1790. Source: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=ucm.5321724825;view=1up;seq=8;size=125 . At the centre: Bonaventura Salesa (drawing) and Girolamo Carattoni (engraving) of the bust of Isocrates from the Azara collection, 1790. Source: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=ucm.5317967398;view=1up;seq=20. On the left: Bonaventura Salesa (drawing) and Giovanni Ottaviani (engraving) of the bust of Demosthenes from the Azara collection, 1790. Source: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=ucm.5317967398;view=1up;seq=12;size=175. The bust of Carneade was one of those found by Azara in Tivoli.

In 1779 Mengs died and Azara decided to do everything possible to preserve his memory. On the one hand, he commissioned a bronze bust of Mengs from the Irish sculptor Christopher Hewetson (c.1737–1798) which was placed at the Pantheon next to Raphael's tomb [48].  On the other hand, he decided to publish a complete edition of the painter's writings, both in Italian and in Spanish, which were brought out in 1780 [49]. In 1784 Carlo Fea dedicated to Azara his translation of the History of the Art of Drawing at the time of the Ancients, the second Italian version of Winckelmann's main work. That same year the Spaniard was appointed ambassador, reaching the apex of his diplomatic career. However, he continued his activity of promoting culture, for example by translating The History of the Life of M. Tullius Cicero by Conyers Middleton (1683-1750) into Spanish, which - as Elvira Barba noted - was one of the most read works by the enlightened followers in Europe.

Fig. 37) The Spanish and Italian edition of the works of Anton Raphael Mengs, published by José Nicolás de Azara in Madrid and Parma in 1780

Things started to turn bad when, in 1789, the monarch Charles III passed away. Immediately after the French Revolution he still played a mediating role between Pope Pius VI and the French troops (Spain had, at first, excellent relations with revolutionary France). When however the Pope was arrested by Napoleon's troops in 1798, Azera was transferred by his government to Paris as an ambassador (while his collection remained in Madrid). One of his concerns became that of saving the collection from dispersion. He therefore decided to donate the Erma of Azara (the portrait of Alexander) to the Louvre and all the rest of the collection (with portraits of thinkers) to the Spanish government. He died in Paris in 1804, after succeeding in his task.

Fig. 38) Christopher Hewetson, Bronze of Anthon Raphael Mengs, 1779. Source: https://enfilade18thc.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/5_53.jpg

NOTES

[17] 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 56.

[18] El Legado de Johann Joachim Winckelmann en España (quoted), p. 57.

[19] El Legado de Johann Joachim Winckelmann en España (quoted), p. 58.

[20] El Legado de Johann Joachim Winckelmann en España (quoted), pp. 58-59.

[21] El Legado de Johann Joachim Winckelmann en España (quoted), p. 59.

[22] El Legado de Johann Joachim Winckelmann en España (quoted), p. 57.

[23] El Legado de Johann Joachim Winckelmann en España (quoted), p. 60.

[24] El Legado de Johann Joachim Winckelmann en España (quoted), p. 113.

[25] El Legado de Johann Joachim Winckelmann en España (quoted), p. 108.

[26] El Legado de Johann Joachim Winckelmann en España (quoted), p. 108-109.

[27] El Legado de Johann Joachim Winckelmann en España (quoted), p. 111.

[28] El Legado de Johann Joachim Winckelmann en España (quoted), p. 114.

[29] El Legado de Johann Joachim Winckelmann en España (quoted), p. 113.

[30] El Legado de Johann Joachim Winckelmann en España (quoted), p. 111.

[31] El Legado de Johann Joachim Winckelmann en España (quoted), p. 111.

[32] El Legado de Johann Joachim Winckelmann en España (quoted), p. 115.

[33] El Legado de Johann Joachim Winckelmann en España (quoted), p. 109.

[34] El Legado de Johann Joachim Winckelmann en España (quoted), p. 109.

[35] El Legado de Johann Joachim Winckelmann en España (quoted), p. 117.

[36] El Legado de Johann Joachim Winckelmann en España (quoted), p. 110.

[37] El Legado de Johann Joachim Winckelmann en España (quoted), p. 110.

[38] El Legado de Johann Joachim Winckelmann en España (quoted), p. 111.

[39] El Legado de Johann Joachim Winckelmann en España (quoted), p. 111.

[40] El Legado de Johann Joachim Winckelmann en España (quoted), p. 112.

[41] El Legado de Johann Joachim Winckelmann en España (quoted), p. 114.

[42] El Legado de Johann Joachim Winckelmann en España (quoted), p. 118.

[43] El Legado de Johann Joachim Winckelmann en España (quoted), p. 117.

[44] El Legado de Johann Joachim Winckelmann en España (quoted), p. 120.

[45] El Legado de Johann Joachim Winckelmann en España (quoted), p. 139.

[46] El Legado de Johann Joachim Winckelmann en España (quoted), p. 139.

[47] El Legado de Johann Joachim Winckelmann en España (quoted), p. 139.

[48] El Legado de Johann Joachim Winckelmann en España (quoted), p. 146.

[49] El Legado de Johann Joachim Winckelmann en España (quoted), p. 142.

[50] El Legado de Johann Joachim Winckelmann en España (quoted), p. 142.