Johann Joachim Winckelmann
Johann Joachim Winckelmann
1717～1768. A German historian of art. He shed new light on art of ancient Greece and established the ground for neo-classicism criticism. The major works of his are Thoughts on the Imitation of Greek Works in Painting and Sculpture （1755）、History of Ancient Art (1764) and others. Walter Pater set a chapter 'Winckelmann' and introduced him to England. Vernon Lee wrote on Winckelmann as "first reveal the world of ancient art"('Orpheus and Eurydice'.) Winckelmann was a homosexual.
In 'Higher Harmonies' in Laurus Nobilis, Lee asserted that Winckelmann and Goethe made sculptures in ancient Greece "fashionable."
Winckelmann asserted that Greek culture is the culture of white, so Pater and Lee, who loved white, loved his works. White was the favorite color of Lee and according to her, the color doesn't express one's inner emotions such as passion. White is also the color of homosexuality and both Lee and Pater were homosexual. Lee's idea that put forms above colors derived from Winckelmann.
'The Child in the Vatican'（Belcaro） is a work in which the influence of Winckelmann on Lee is the most salient. In this short story, a boy visits Vatican and looks at sculptures there. There is a passage in it: "in these vague, white things, with their rounded white cheek, and clotted white hair, with their fold of white drapery about them, the child recognises nothing: men? women? it does not ask: for it, they are mere things, figures cut out of stone."
Christoph, the hero of Ottilie, reads Lessings' Laocoon and then reads "Winckelmann's great books."
