tour 2 of 21
Enlightenment: Art and Civilization
The history of art
The development of the history of art in the
eighteenth century centred on the idea of classification and the
attempt to trace the progress of art throughout human
history.
Initially,
collections of artefacts had been organised according to material,
but classifications by subject soon became more common. This, for
example, was the approach adopted by Bernard de Montfaucon
(1665-1741) in L'Antiquité
expliquée (1722), a visual encyclopedia of
antiquity.
The idea of
grouping objects by date and artistic style first developed in the
study of paintings. In the second half of the eighteenth century,
scholars began to use this approach to classify other objects, such
as sculpture and vases. Most famously, The
History of Ancient Art by Johann Winckelmann
(1717-68) promoted an analysis of artistic development based on
style that influenced scholars throughout the late eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries. Winckelmann's work helped to create a
formal approach to the history of art and established ancient Greek
art as the pinnacle of human artistic
progress.
Illustration:
Johann Joachim
Winckelmann, engraving by M.
Blot