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\outl0\strokewidth0 \strokec2 Johann Joachim Winckelmann\
Johann Joachim Winckelmann on Art, Architecture, and Archaeology\
Translated with an Introduction and notes by David Carter\
0 CAMDEN HOUSE\
Rochester, New York\
Introduction\
Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717-68) has long been recognized as a founder of modern methodologies in the fields of art history and archaeology. He also contributed considerably to studies of classical Greek architecture, and applied empirically derived categories of style to the analysis of classical works of art and architecture. He was also one of the first to undertake detailed empirical examinations of artifacts and describe them precisely in a way that enabled reasoned conclusions to be drawn and theories to be advanced about ancient societies and their cultures.1\
The present volume provides a selection of Winckelmann\'92s essays ordered thematically, allowing the reader to discover his approaches to the study of classical Greek art, sculpture, and architecture as well as to his methodology in analyzing artifacts found at the site of the town of Herculaneum, buried, along with Pompeii and Stabiae, by the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79. The essays have been newly translated for this edition and are preceded in this introduction by a brief account of his life and works, including consideration of the circumstances of his murder, together with a consideration of some of the major influences of his writings. This account is followed by an assessment of his influence on his contemporaries and subsequent writers and artists. At the end of this introduction more detailed information is provided on the organization of the present volume and the principles that were followed in the translation and editing process.\
Childhood and School\
Johann Joachim Winckelmann was an only child, born on December 9, 1717, to the shoemaker Martin Winckelmann and his wife Anna Maria in the town of Stendal in an area known as the Altmark, now in the state of Saxony-Anhalt. The family lived in a very small thatched house, which was provided by his mother\'92s side of the family. It consisted of basically one room, which served as living room, workplace, and display area for his father\'92s goods. The parents probably slept in a small alcove and young Johann Joachim may have had his own small sleeping area.\
Although their circumstances were very poor, Winckelmann\'92s parents were determined to ensure that their son received a good education. After attending the primary school (Grundschule) from the age of five, it seems that he was accepted into the secondary level school, equivalent to\
a grammar school (Lateinschule), when he was nine years old. In order to cover the costs of his studies Winckelmann\'92s parents managed to get him into a special choir known as a \'93Kurrende\'94 (from Latin \'93currere\'94 meaning \'93to run around\'94). It was a traveling choir made up of poor pupils, who received some payment for their services. They were led by one of the older pupils and received payment for performing at weddings, funerals, and other events. In this way they could afford to pay for their schoolbooks and did not have to pay for their tuition. Winckelmann was also very much helped by the support of the headmaster of the school, Esaias Wilhelm Tappert, who in 1732 appointed him his own personal assistant although he was only fifteen at the time. Tappert was almost totally blind and needed constant help. One of Winckelmann\'92s main duties was to read aloud to him, and he was also put in charge of the school library, which enabled him to pursue his own reading extensively.\
It became clear that Winckelmann had a gift for languages and was developing a love of books, so, in March 1735, when Winckelmann was only seventeen, Tappert arranged for him to attend the Collnisches Gymnasium in Berlin. Fortunately Tappert knew the headmaster of the Gymnasium, Friedrich Bake, very well, and Winckelmann was provided with accommodation in Bake\'92s house, where he was also put in charge of the headmaster\'92s own children. Winckelmann received a broader general education, including some natural science. He was particularly attracted to the course on Greek taught by the assistant headmaster, Christian Tobias. Despite his enthusiasm for this subject, it was not sufficient to earn him a favorable report when he left the Gymnasium in the autumn of 1736 to return to Stendal. The Rector described him in his report as \'93restless and inconstant.\'94 But Winckelmann did not let this deter him, and had himself registered at the Salzweder Gymnasium in order to perfect his knowledge of Greek. Here he was able to obtain the post of a teaching assistant. Little is known, however, about Winckelmann\'92s activities in the next two years, before he went to university. A recent biographer, Wolfgang von Wangenheim, has indicated in his account of Winckelmann\'92s life, entitled Der verworfene Stein, that nothing is known about his last days at school, about his relationships with his parents and friends during that time, nor about his whole period of puberty and confirmation.2\
Student and Teacher\
In April 1738, Winckelmann registered at the University of Halle as a student of theology. This was not out of any strong religious commitment. The theology faculty was the only one that was supported by both the state and the church and allowed children of poor families to attend without the necessity of paying student fees. It has been possible to determine which courses Winckelmann followed in Halle. Apart from courses\
related to his theological studies he also attended lectures by a man who undoubtedly had great influence on his developing interest in the arts: Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten (1714-62). Baumgarten was a philosopher who redefined the concept of aesthetics in a way in which we still use it today. Previously the term \'93aesthetic\'94 had the general meaning of \'93relating to sensibility\'94 or \'93responding to the stimulation of the senses,\'94 but for Baumgarten aesthetics came to mean the study of good and bad taste, and was related to the judgment of what was beautiful. Good taste was the ability to judge what was beautiful by intuition and not through analysis by the intellect. Baumgarten hoped to develop nevertheless a science of aesthetics, the deduction of principles of both natural and artistic beauty based on a sense of good taste. His theories were very influential, though later they were strongly criticized by Immanuel Kant. One reason Winckelmann admired Baumgarten\'92s lectures was the wealth of literary knowledge they revealed. As he was already developing a strong interest in ancient cultures, he also attended the lectures of the philologist and medical expert Johann Heinrich Schulze (1687-1744). Schulze lectured on Greek and Roman antiquities, using illustrations from ancient coins. Numismatics was also to become an area of Winckelmann\'92s own expertise. When he finally left the university, in February 1740, it was with a report that described him as a student of average ability.\
In the spring of 1740 he acquired a post in the service of a military man, the Colonel Georg Arnold von Grollmann in Osterburg, at that time a small town with a military barracks. His main duty was to teach history and philosophy to Grollmann\'92s eldest son. During this period Winckelmann also studied English, French, and Italian.\
In May 1741 he entered the University of Jena, with the intention of studying geometry, medicine, and modern languages. He pursued his studies in medicine with considerable enthusiasm, though he soon lost interest in mathematics. He gave up his studies after barely a year without formally completing them.\
In the spring of 1742 Winckelmann took another post as private tutor to Peter Lamprecht, the eldest son of the head clerk of the cathedral chapter in Hadmersleben, Christian Lamprecht, with the aim of preparing the boy for university. Winckelmann developed a strong affection for the boy, which was clearly homosexual in nature on Winckelmann\'92s side. The boy was fond of his teacher, too, though he could not return the affection with the same intensity. Winckelmann obtained the post of headmaster in the grammar school in Seehausen. Here, apart from his administrative duties, Winckelmann taught geography, logic, history, and the Greek, Latin, and Hebrew languages.\
By this time, however, Winckelmann was feeling disenchanted with the cultural limitations of living in provincial circumstances. He sustained himself with his reading of whatever works of Greek literature he could\
lay his hands on. Apart from his love for Homer, which dated from his school days, he also read works by Sophocles, Plato, Xenophon, and others, acquiring in the process an extensive knowledge of the history and culture of antiquity that would be indispensible to him in his later research. He studied long hours while also preparing his teaching for the school and for the young Lamprecht, whom he continued to tutor. For several years he continued thus, nursing the desire to leave Seehausen, until finally, in 1748, he was offered a post that enabled him to escape.\
Schloss Nothnitz and Dresden\
The Reichsgraf Heinrich von Biinau had invited Winckelmann to take up the post of librarian at his castle, Schloss Nothnitz, near Dresden. Winckelmann took up his duties there in September 1748. The library had one of the largest private collections in Germany. Biinau had transferred the library from Dresden to Nothnitz in 1740, and had had it all catalogued at that time. It contained valuable editions from many countries of works of literature and natural science together with a large collection of journals. The prime task given to Winckelmann was collecting material for Biinau\'92s planned extensive history of the German emperors. Apart from giving him the opportunity to learn about the methods of historical research, it also enabled Winckelmann to study many French and English works and volumes of engravings of ancient cultural objects.\
While working for the Reichsgraf he was also able to visit the collection of paintings in the Dresden Gemaldegallerie, which held about 1,500 works at the time, most of them Italian from the seventeenth century. During this period he started writing his impressions of some of these paintings. The work was never completed but was published posthumously under the title Description of the Most Excellent Paintings in the Dresden Gallery. It is included in the present volume. In 1755 Winckelmann\'92s first and very influential work was published, the Thoughts on the Imitation of Greek Works in Painting and the Art of Sculpture. Only fifty-odd copies were printed at first, but the next year, as word about it spread, it became necessary to run to a second printing. On this occasion Winckelmann took the opportunity of dealing with his critics in a unique way. In the second printing he included an attack on his work composed by himself under the title Open Letter on Thoughts on the Imitation of Greek Works in Painting and the Art of Sculpture. This was followed, in the second printing, by a counter-attack also composed by himself, with the title Explanation of Thoughts on the Imitation of Greek Works in Painting and the Art of Sculpture; and Response to the Open Letter on these Thoughts. All three essays are included as the first items in the present collection, followed by a short fragmentary piece he wrote sometime later during the\
period 1756/57 entitled More Mature Thoughts on the Imitation of the Aneients with Respeet to Drawing and the Art of Sculpture.\
Dresden was at that time a major center for the arts and scholarship, and through his position as librarian in Schloss Nothnitz Winckelmann came into contact with many leading cultural figures. Among them was the painter Adam Friedrich Oeser, with whom Winckelmann developed a close and lifelong friendship. Oeser became an influential figure, being appointed director of the Academy of Drawing, Painting, and Architecture in 1764 and finally Court Painter. When Winckelmann left the service of Biinau in October 1754, he moved to Dresden and lived with his friend. He learned much from Oeser: refining his artistic vision, broadening his understanding of artistic theory, as well as improving his skills as a draftsman.\
Winckelmann was also able to study the collection of objects in the Dresden collection of Antiquities (Dresdner Antikensammlung), but not in the best circumstances. Not much care had been taken to display them to their best advantage: at first they were all put in the large garden of the main building, and then spread temporarily through four different pavilions. Winckelmann was later to describe many of the works as being \'93packed together like herrings\'94 (in Treatise on the Capacity for Sensitivity to the Beautiful in Art, and the Method of Teaching Ity of 1763, also included in the present volume).\
Rome and Naples\
Winckelmann had long desired to visit Rome, and his opportunity came when he met, at some time between 1748 and 1754 during his stay in Nochnitz, the papal nuncio Count Alberigo Archinto, who was about to return to Rome to take up the post of governor of Rome. The nuncio was enthusiastic about converting Protestants to Catholicism, and for some time Winckelmann himself had been toying with the idea of adopting the Catholic faith. Little is certain about his motivation for the change, but there was considerable pressure on him to be converted. The members of the Saxon court at Dresden and its ruler King Augustus (1696-1763) were either all born Catholics or converts. And both the Jesuit priest Father Leo Rauch, who was royal confessor of the court chapel, and the papal nuncio assured him that only as a Catholic could he gain access to the antiquities stored in Rome. After a considerable struggle with his conscience, Winckelmann finally realized that it was the only way forward for him. He left it till the last minute and converted just before Archinto was about to leave for Rome in the summer of 1754. The nuncio wanted Winckelmann to follow him to Rome immediately, but Winckelmann delayed his departure several times, finally setting off in September 1755.\
The journey took eight weeks, and he finally arrived in Rome on November 18, 1755. His plan initially was to stay for two years, financed by a grant from Augustus, who had been persuaded to help him by Leo Rauch. With the help of the Dresden painter and administrator Christian Dietrich, Winckelmann made contact with Anton Raphael Mengs, who had gone to Rome in 1752 in his capacity as painter to the Saxon court. Mengs found Winckelmann accommodation in the Palazzo Zuccari, which was a center for many foreign artists. The friendship with Mengs was to become very important for Winckelmann during his first years in Rome. At the time Mengs was highly regarded as an artist in the developing classical style, though his reputation has not survived.\
Winckelmann soon made contact with other prominent artists working in the city, including Angelica Kauffman (her preferred spelling of her name), the Swiss-born artist, who was later, in 1764, to paint one of the most famous portraits of Winckelmann. And through his acquaintanceship with the prelate Michelangelo Giacomelli he managed to get to know many scholars in Rome.\
In 1756 the Seven Years War broke out, and one of the consequences was that Dresden was occupied by the Prussians. This led Winckelmann to fear that his allowance from the King of Saxony might be discontinued, so he started to seek other sources of income. Archinto had now become Cardinal Secretary of State, and Winckelmann offered him his services as librarian. Archinto not only gave him the job, but also provided him with a comfortable five-room apartment in the Palazzo Cancelleria. This facilitated Winckelmann\'92s contacts with Roman academia, and he was able to gain access to the most substantial libraries, including that of the Collegio Romano, which contained a large collection of works relating to antiquarian studies. During this period in Rome he was also able to study the collections of art and antiquities in many Roman villas belonging to illustrious families, such as those of the Medici, the Borghese, and the Negroni, Mattei, and Ludovisi. He also undertook trips to the Villa Hadriana and to Tivoli.\
For some time Winckelmann had wanted to go and view the collection of gems owned by the Baron Philippe von Stosch in Florence, who wanted Winckelmann to publish something about his collection. When the baron died in 1757, his nephew, Heinrich Wilhelm Muzell-Stosch, invited Winckelmann to come to Florence to draw up a catalogue of the collection, with the aim of selling it. Thus it came about that Winckelmann spent the period from September 1758 till April 1759 in Florence. Through this one work, Description of the Engraved Stones of the Former Baron Stoseh (published in French, 1760), Winckelmann was to set new standards for research into the history of antique precious stones: he described them very precisely, organized them according to their style, and provided interpretations of the mythological motifs engraved on them.\
Baron von Stosch had been instrumental in securing Winckelmann\'92s future: he had recommended him to Cardinal Alessandro Albani, a well-known expert in antiquities, and when Archinto died, the cardinal offered Winckelmann the post of librarian in his own service. When he returned to Rome, Winckelmann moved into a suite of four rooms in the cardinal\'92s palace at the Quattro Fontane. His main duty was the supervision of the library, which had been partly founded by Albani\'92s uncle, Pope Clement XI. Winckelmann was lucky to find in the cardinal an enthusiastic supporter of all his research interests.\
Thus, while in Rome he was able to undertake many research trips. He was especially interested in the archaeological excavations in the Kingdom of Naples, and between 1758 and 1767 he visited the area four times, to view the excavations of the towns destroyed by the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79: Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Stabae. He spent lengthy stays there from February to May 1758, from January to February 1762, and from February to March 1764. His last visit there took place in the autumn of 1767. After his second trip in 1762 he gathered all his thoughts and observations together in his Open Letter on the Hereulanean Discoveries, which is included in full in the present volume. In 1758 he had already written a lengthy study on ancient scripts found at Herculaneum, entitled Report on the Ancient Hereulanean Scripts. These two works helped to spread knowledge about the towns buried by Vesuvius, and established a methodology for the description of excavations.\
He was also developing an interest in ancient Greek architecture. In his first visit to Naples in 1758 he had visited the temples at Paestum, which are among the earliest and best-preserved Greek temples in Italy. On his observations made during this visit he based his descriptions of ancient Greek temple architecture and its development, presented at length in the essay Remarks on the Architecture of the Ancients, completed after his second visit in 1762. In the present volume is included the first version of this study, entitled Preliminary Report on Remarks on the Architecture of the Ancients. During this period Winckelmann also visited Agrigento in Sicily and wrote a description of the temples there. This essay, Remarks on the Architecture of the Old Temples of Agrigento in Sicily, completed in 1759, is also included in the present volume. 1759 proved to be a very productive year for him, and other essays of that year are also included in this volume: Recalling the Observation of Works of Art, On Grace in Works of Art, and Description of the Torso in the Belvedere in Rome.\
Probably Winckelmann\'92s highest accomplishment in terms of social status occurred in the spring of 1763. On March 30, 1763, the President of All Antiquities In and Around Rome, Abbate Ridolfino Venuti, died. Cardinal Albani proposed that Winckelmann take over his responsibilities under the title of Papal Antiquarian. He was appointed on April 11,\
and with the post came considerable power and influence. Any export of antiquities required his authorization, and any site where new archaeological finds were made had to be reported to him via two assessors who worked for him. He also had the responsibility of acting as guide to the antiquities of Rome for any person of importance visiting the city. As there was little income attached to the appointment, Albani managed to arrange for Winckelmann to combine his responsibilities with a post in the Vatican Library, as Scrittore Teutonica (Library Scribe Responsible for German Language). In the following year he was appointed in addition to a similar post for Greek language. This post resulted in him now having to keep regular working hours in the library: every day except Thursdays and Sundays, from 9:00 a.m. till midday. It was in the same year, 1763, that his essay entitled Treatise on the Capacity for Sensitivity to the Beautiful in Art, and the Method of Teaching It appeared, which is also included in the present volume. In 1764 he published his more extensive study of Herculaneum, entitled Report on the Latest Hereulanean Excavations.\
Homoerotic Sensibility\
All the evidence indicates that Winckelmann was homosexual, though some of the earlier accounts of his life pass over this fact in silence or explain away the language of many of his letters as typical of the flowery declarations of affection between males of the period. It was an essential part of Winckelmann\'92s sensibility, however, and must be taken into account when considering his views on the culture and art of Greek antiquity. He argued that the young, naked male body was for the Greeks the supreme embodiment of their ideals of both natural and artistic beauty. This was undoubtedly the case, and, though some might argue that his own inclinations biased his interpretations, one can more plausibly assert that, on the contrary, they helped to right the balance. Before Winckelmann the homoerotic aspects of classical Greek art had been played down too much. His homoerotic sensibility thus enabled him to perceive the beauty of the male nude more clearly and to describe it evocatively. The interrelationship between Winckelmann\'92s homosexuality and his theories of art has been explored extensively by two authors in recent years: Alex Potts in his book Elesh and the Ideal: Winckelmann and the Origins of Art History (1994), and Wolfgang von Wangenstein in his book Der verworfene Stein: Winekelmann^s Leben (2005). I am indebted to both these authors for their insights.\
Winckelmann was clearly aware of his sexual inclinations from at least his mid-twenties, if not earlier. He recalled in a letter to Stosch in 1765 that he had felt his first real love and friendship in his relationship to his pupil, Peter Lamprecht, when he took up his post as tutor to him in Seehausen in 1743.3 Strong affection for the young men he came to know\
at various times in his life is also reflected in the dedications of his works. It was not so common at the time to dedicate a work with such fulsome expressions of affection to a friend. In the dedication for his Treatise on the Capacity for Sensitivity to the Beautiful in Art. . . of 1763 his sense of loss at the departure of the dedicatee, a nobleman from Latvia, Friedrich Rheinhold von Berg, is expressed unequivocally. Potts describes the dedication as \'93almost a love poem,\'94 and argues that \'93his disquisition on beauty had in large part been inspired by Berg.\'944 That the dedication was not just a conventional expression of devotion is confirmed by a letter to another of Winckelmann\'92s correspondents. In August of 1763 he wrote to a young Swiss friend, Leonhard Usteri: \'93I fell in love, and how, with a young Latvian and promised him the best of all letters.\'945\
It is known from Winckelmann\'92s correspondence that he also indulged occasionally in sexual adventures of a more casual nature, but he kept a clear distinction in his mind between the idealized friendships he maintained with the young noblemen of his acquaintance and such casual affairs. He wrote openly of the latter to certain of his friends whom he knew he could trust, such as a Dr. Bianconi at the Saxon court, to whom he described his experience of submitting to anal intercourse.6 And it seems that Cardinal Albani was generally tolerant of Winckelmann\'92s sexual adventures. To another friend Winckelmann wrote of how he often regaled Albani with stories of his \'93amours.\'947\
There is one remarkable source for Winckelmann\'92s sexual indulgence with younger men of a lower class: Casanova\'92s autobiography. Giacomo Girolamo Casanova de Seingalt, to give him his full name, wrote his Story of My Life (Histoire de ma vie) in French between 1789 and 1792. It must of course remain doubtful to what extent Casanova\'92s account, particularly in its description of details and reporting of dialogue, can be relied on. Certain only are the impressions left in Casanova\'92s mind. He met Winckelmann in Rome in 1761 and one day went to see him in his study, obviously unannounced. As he entered he saw Winckelmann withdrawing quickly from close proximity to a young boy. In Casanova\'92s account, he gave Winckelmann every opportunity to pretend that nothing untoward had happened, but Winckelmann insisted on justifying himself, claiming that as he was researching the culture and manners of the ancient Greeks, he should experience the kind of love that they had praised so much. Casanova concludes by saying that Winckelmann declared his experiment to have been a failure and that women were clearly preferable in every respect.8 Given the openness about his sexuality in letters to certain friends and even to the cardinal, it is difficult to believe that Winckelmann was seriously worried about the libertine spreading rumors about him.\
The fact that Winckelmann had one close relationship to a woman should not be passed over without comment. It was with the wife of one of his friends. His relationship to the painter Anton Raphael Mengs\
was close but complicated. In 1765 Mengs was fulfilling his obligations as court painter in Madrid, and early in that year his wife Margherita returned to Rome alone after visiting her husband in Spain. Mengs had asked Winckelmann to look after his wife for him in his absence, and an affair developed between the two. He wrote of the affair to his old friend H. D. Berendis: \'93I fell in love then for the very first time with someone of the female sex.\'949 In a letter to Stosch however, in which he described the affair, he reassured his friend that male friendship was still his highest goal.10\
Murder in Trieste\
The official police reports and trial documents concerning the events surrounding Winckelmann\'92s death have been recovered and published in both Italian and German. Full details are provided in the bibliography. For convenience they are referred to here as the \'93murder trial documents\'94 (Mordakte).\
How did he come to be in Trieste in any case? Somehow the yearning had arisen to see old friends in his homeland again, and he had also been receiving invitations from various German academic institutions. In March of 1768 he wrote to friends back in Germany that he would be seeing them soon. And in his last letter from Rome he wrote to Stosch outlining his planned itinerary. His intention was to visit Venice, Verona, Augsburg, Munich, Vienna, and Prague, probably Dresden, and certainly Leipzig and Dessau. He asked his friend to join him at that point so that they could travel on to Braunschweig and Gottingen together. Berlin and Hannover were also included in the itinerary. Specific individuals he wanted to visit were the old friend he had lived with in Dresden, Adam Friedrich Oeser, in Leipzig now, and Christian Gottlob Heyne in Gottingen, who was interested in establishing archaeology as a scientific discipline in German universities. Winckelmann\'92s plan was to be in Switzerland by the autumn, and from there he would return to Italy. He set off in the morning of April 10, 1768, in the company of the sculptor Bartolomeo Cavaceppi, who was taking some examples of antiquities and a catalogue with him, in the hope of making some sales.\
The first part of the journey went well enough. The two friends visited various collections in Bologna, Venice, and Verona. But as they were traveling through the Tyrolean Alps, Winckelmann became ill and depressed. Cavaceppi wrote an account of the journey, which he included in a published version of his catalogue a year later.11 He wrote that his friend seemed to develop a real horror of the mountains, and wanted to return to Rome. But he managed to persuade him to continue their journey as far as Regensburg. Winckelmann was still determined to turn back and persuaded Cavaceppi to accompany him to Vienna, where he was\
received by the Austrian empress, Maria-Theresia. The Austrian chancellor, Prince Kaunitz, offered him a highly distinguished post, but although he was showered with gifts, he declined. After the two friends visited the library and various art collections, Winckelmann decided they should go their separate ways. He had developed a fever and decided that he should travel back to Rome as soon as possible. It was in Vienna that he wrote the last letters to his friends. Then he traveled to Trieste, from where he planned to take a ship to Ancona and thence to travel overland to Rome. But the departure of the ship was delayed for several days. The rest of the story we know from the \'93murder trial documents.\'94\
Winckelmann arrived in Trieste on Wednesday, June 1, 1768, by coach from Ljubljana and took a room in what was at that time the only hotel in the town, the Osteria Grande. No one in the city knew who he was, and he signed himself in as \'93Signor Giovanni.\'94 He was given room 10, with a view of the harbor. At dinner he got to know the man in the room next to him, a certain Francesco Arcangeli from Venice. Over the following week, during which Winckelmann had to stay there due to the delay of his ship\'92s departure, the two were seen frequently together. Finally Winckelmann was informed that the ship for Ancona would sail the next day, Wednesday, June 9, so he settled his bill and prepared to leave. On that morning, just before 10 a.m., the waiter, Andreas Harthaber, heard a noise in a room on the first floor and what sounded like something heavy falling on the floor. He opened the door to Winckelmann\'92s room to find him on the floor with Arcangeli kneeling beside him, his hands on Winckelmann\'92s chest. The Italian immediately rushed past Harthaber and out of the room. Winckelmann, with blood gushing from his chest, cried out in Italian \'93Look, look, what he\'92s done to me!\'94 The waiter and a maid ran off in search of help. The servant of another guest noticed a tight cord around Winckelmann\'92s neck and loosened it. A doctor finally arrived and attempted to stem the flow of blood. As it became clear that he was dying, a capuchin monk gave him the last rites. He was sufficiently conscious to be able to give an account to the city recorder, in the absence of the state prosecutor, of what had happened to him. He had shown Arcangeli some valuable coins, including one given him by the Austrian empress, and when Arcangeli discovered that Winckelmann was about to depart he had come again that morning, asking to see the coins again. Upon being shown the coins he had put the noose around Winckelmann\'92s neck and stabbed him several times. After completing his account of what had happened, Winckelmann then dictated a will, leaving various items to friends, a gift for the hotel servant, and some money to help the poor in Trieste, with the rest going to Cardinal Albani. Finally, after losing much more blood, Winckelmann died at about 4:00 p.m.\
The murder weapons were soon found, and Arcangeli did not escape very far. Some soldiers stopped him on the way to Llubljana, suspecting\
him of being a spy, as he had no travel documents. When the authorities in Trieste heard about this, he was arrested and sent back there. During his trial, details emerged about Arcangeli\'92s background: he was thirty-eight years old and had been a cook for a count in Vienna, from whom he had stolen money, and for this he was put in prison. There had been a general amnesty and he had been set free, but under the condition that he never set foot again on Austrian soil. He went first to Venice and then to Trieste (although it then belonged to Austria), where he took the hotel room next to Winckelmann. Despite his protests that he had acted in self-defense, it was clear from the evidence (the bloody knife was found in Winckelmann\'92s room but its sheath in Arcangeli\'92s own) that it was premeditated murder. There was also evidence that he had begged money of a priest and, not long before the deed, also from a hotel maid. Finally, on July 18, he was condemned to death on a \'93breaking wheel\'94 (a punishment that involved being stretched and beaten to death while tied to a wheel).\
Von Wangenheim reviews the various theories about the murder (a Jesuit conspiracy, the reaction of a young man being seduced, etc.).12 It seems to the present writer that the most likely version remains that given in the \'93murder trial documents\'94: it was a pathetic attempt at robbery that went horribly wrong. Many legends have grown up around Winckelmann\'92s murder, so that the basic facts should be clarified. It is highly unlikely that it was in response to a seduction attempt by Winckelmann. Winckelmann was an admirer of the highest ideals of male beauty embodied in Greek sculptures of young men, and Arcangeli was a coarse thirty-eight-year-old, with a roughly shaped figure and an ugly turned-up nose.\
Winckelmann had achieved so much when he died tragically thus in his fifty-first year, and there must be speculation about what more he might have achieved had he lived. Yet his influence was only just beginning.\
Major Works\
Winckelmann\'92s magnum opus and most extensive work was the History of the Art of Antiquity^ which first appeared in 1764. A glance at its contents pages reveals the extraordinary scope of the work. Its lasting value lies not so much in its historical details as in Winckelmann\'92s overall scheme representing the changes and developments of style in the history of art. He traced the history of art through the different styles that predominated in any given period, with particular emphasis of course on the Greek art of antiquity. He described the individual characteristics of each style very specifically and accurately, enabling any given work to be placed at a precise point in his scheme. His descriptions of individual works are written in powerful and evocative language, but based on very close and accurate\
observation. Notable in this respect are his descriptions of the Laocoon Group and the Belvedere Torso.\
Winckelmann made modifications to this major work throughout the rest of his life. In 1767 he published the essay Remarks on the History of the Art of Antiquity, which was intended to be in preparation for his revised second edition of the History, but this did not appear until after his death. And in 1766 he had also written a piece entitled Essay on Allegory, especially in Relation to Art.\
Another extensive work by Winckelmann, which is now not so well known, is one with an Italian title, the Monumenti antiehi inediti, spiegati ed illustrati (Unpublished ancient monuments, explained and illustrated), published in 1767. The work was produced with the financial support of Cardinal Albani and some other friends, and Winckelmann prepared it for printing and covered the printing costs himself. In this work Winckelmann not only described in detail, with many illustrations, hitherto unknown ancient works and monuments, but also provided interpretations of them relating them to their mythological associations. This was a new method at the time.\
Winckelmann\'92s Influences on Art, Art History, and Archaeology\
While the rapid development in modern scientific methodology in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries has meant that the practical innovations introduced by Winckelmann in the field of archaeological research have been long surpassed, he is still revered for having inaugurated an approach to archaeological investigation that required the preservation of found objects together with an account of the contexts in which they were found. Thus the highly respected British archaeologist, Colin Renfrew, is still able to refer to Winckelmann, in the sixth edition (2012) of the extensive practical manual he wrote together with Paul Bahn, Archaeology: Theories, Methods and Practice, as \'93the father of Classical archaeology.\'9413 There is more extensive recognition of Winckelmann\'92s contribution to art history. The director of the Courtauld Institute of Art at the University of London, Eric Fernie, has evaluated Winckelmann\'92s contributions to both art history and archaeology in his critical anthology Art History and Its Methods (1999).14 Fernie justifies calling Winckelmann the father of archaeology \'93for his catalogue of antique gems and for the control which he introduced into the conduct of excavations\'94 (68). And for him Winckelmann was responsible for introducing the first real innovations in methodology in art history since Vasari, who had primarily only recounted the lives of artists. Winckelmann developed what was essentially cultural history, \'93that is, the use of all relevant sources of information to place the arts in the context of the cultures which produced them\'94 (12).\
Especially prestigious support for the description of Winckelmann as the father of modern art history is to be found in the 2001 volume Classical Art: From Greece to Rome, by Mary Beard and John Henderson, part of the Oxford History of Art series.15 Beard and Henderson describe Winckelmann as \'93the first, most people would say, to embark on a systematic study not just of art, but of the history of art; the first indeed to coin the now inescapable phrase \'91history of art.\'92\'94 Winckelmann is responsible \'93for setting in place a chronological schema for plotting ancient art as a development; and for identifying the main stages or periods of that development\'94 (68). With reference particularly to Winckelmann\'92s History of the Art of Antiquity, the authors point out that art historians still make reference to the style periods he defined: the Older Style, the High (or Sublime) Style, the Beautiful Style, and finally the Style of the Imitators. Although subsequent writers may have used different names for the periods, they have respected Winckelmann\'92s divisions. The Oxford History of Art series itself still utilizes Winckelmann\'92s chronological stages for the volumes covering classical art. The authors also express respect for Winckelmann\'92s scholarly methodology, which, they admit, has been criticized by some writers over the years. They praise the facts that he was much more obsessively concerned with documenting evidence and that he was \'93much more provisional, much more open-ended\'94 (70) than he has often been given credit for. The authors describe Winckelmann\'92s Monumenti antichi inediti (usually known in English as the Unpublished Antiquities) as \'93a vastly learned and daringly radical organization of the chief works to be found in the half-dozen prize collections of sculpture in Rome with a sensible arrangement by subject matter\'94 (70).\
Beard and Henderson also stress the importance of understanding Winckelmann\'92s methodologies in their historical context. It was not just a question of reflecting on a ready-ordered collection of materials. He had first to sort out the jumbled mass of sculpture and other works to be found in the museums of his day. A large number of the artifacts had also been wrongly identified and provided with misleading labels. Winckelmann provided \'93an effective framework for classifying and explaining the monuments\'94 (70). A major breakthrough in his thought that conditioned his subsequent systematization of classical art was the realization that \'93the subject matter of sculpture from Rome was drawn substantially from Greek mythology\'94 (70). This led Winckelmann also to the concept of imitation, Nachahmunjy, as he used it in the first essay in the present volume. The sculptors of ancient Rome had adopted what Beard and Henderson call an \'93aesthetic of imitation\'94 (70). Lest this concept of imitation be misunderstood as implying unimaginative \'93copying\'94 of Greek originals, Beard and Henderson suggest, ingeniously, that it has more in common with our contemporary\
usage of the concept of \'93postmodernism,\'94 involving a respect for the achievements of the past, but adapting them to the cultural context of the present. The distinction between Winckelmann\'92s concept of imitation and mere \'93copying\'94 is discussed also in Hellmut SichtermamTs introduction to the Kleine Schriften (xxvi-xxvii).16 Sichtermann also warns the reader, however, that Winckelmann was not always consistent in his usage of the term (KS^ xxxvi).\
Winckelmann based most of his judgments of ancient Greek art on Roman copies, but the judgments should not be dismissed on these grounds. It is important to consider the historical context of his studies. There was at that time little knowledge of original classical Greek sculpture, because so few remains had been discovered. It is due to his dependence on consideration of Roman copies, however, that fault can be found with some of his datings of individual works. He put some statues at far too early a date and failed to recognize some of the few genuine early Greek works that were to be found in Rome at the time.\
It is against this background that one should consider how one particular piece of sculpture came to have such a strong influence on aesthetic theory from the moment it was discovered, but particularly from the time of Winckelmann\'92s reflections on it. The work in question is a huge ancient marble sculpture that has survived almost intact, and depicts a muscular old man struggling in the coils of a serpent, which is also entwining two younger men, one on each side of the central figure. It is known as the Laocoon, after a Trojan priest who was killed, along with his sons, by two sea-serpents, just before the sack of Troy by the Greeks hidden in the wooden horse. The sculpture was probably created in BC 1 by the artists Hagesandros, Polydoros, and Athenodorus of Rhodes. At some point in its history it had been taken to Rome. Since its discovery there in 1506 it had been endlessly written about and frequently copied. Its importance in art history is that it was regarded for a long time as one of the few works of sculpture that could be identified with certainty. In his essay on imitation (the first in the present volume) Winckelmann reveals that he was particularly fascinated by the contrasting feelings evoked in us when we observe the sculpture: we admire the physical beauty of the body of Laocoon but are at the same time moved by his suffering. He also contrasts the expression of the scene in the sculpture with the description of it by the poet Virgil. These comments alone sparked off a whole debate among Winckelmann\'92s contemporaries about the relationship between art and literature in general, and the visual arts and poetry in particular. The issues were taken up especially by Goethe and the dramatist and critic G. E. Lessing, among others. Winckelmann\'92s influence on German literature and thought will be considered subsequently.\
Another aspect of Winckelmann\'92s writings is taken up by Beard and Henderson in the third chapter of their book, and is summed up in the\
chapter\'92s title: \'93Sensuality, Sexuality and the Love of Art.\'94 The authors remind the reader that Winckelmann was taken up in the latter part of the twentieth century by some commentators as one of the first to open up gay perspectives on aesthetic theory. They also point out that Winckelmann has been criticized for allowing homoeroticism to predominate in considerations of the classical ideal of beauty. Although it is exaggerating to say that he allows it to predominate, it is certainly true to say that he foregrounds the subject of male beauty in discussions of classical art. There is one example of supreme male beauty that Winckelmann was clearly justified in waxing lyrical about (as he does in the essay on imitation): one of the many statues depicting Antinous, the teenage youth adored by the Emperor Hadrian. The images of the youth, made before or after he died in a tragic accident, were clearly conceived to capture his erotic charm for the emperor. In the words of Beard and Henderson: \'93it is a very clear case of the projection of desire into marble; of fixing an erotic charge in stone\'94 (107).\
One scholar has explored the ways in which the love of Greek classical art, as inspired by Winckelmann\'92s writings, became institutionalized in German culture: Suzanne L. Marchand, in her study Down from Olympus: Archaeology and Philhellenism in Germany, 1750-1970 (2003).17 Marchand examines the fact that Graecophilia became the prime passion of many writers and artists in Germany, and the ideal of imitating Greek art, in Winckelmann\'92s sense, was sanctioned as the official architectural style for state-funded cultural institutions. This led to such large-scale cultural endeavors as the acquisition of the Pergamon Altar. The preference of the Prussian government for classical style in its public architecture also facilitated the rise to fame of the architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Schinkel\'92s classicism is exemplified by several famous buildings in Berlin, such as the Neue Wache, the Schauspielhaus, and the Altes Museum.\
Tracing the influence of Winckelmann on various individual artists would require an extensive study and is beyond the scope of the present work. It is worth citing one example, however, of a famous artist who was influenced directly and considerably by Winckelmann\'92s work. In histories of art Jacques-Louis David (1748-1825) is usually identified as being a representative of the neoclassical style. Winckelmann was already dead when David went to Italy in 1775 to study various artists and visit Pompeii, but he met Winckelmann\'92s friend Mengs there, who introduced him to Winckelmann\'92s works. David\'92s debt to Winckelmann is explored extensively by Alex Potts in his book Flesh and the Ideal. According to Potts, the influence is clearly evident at a stage of development in David\'92s art when \'93bodily beauty and sensuality start taking precedence over the austere muscularity of his earlier . . . style\'94 (225).\
Winckelmann\'92s Influence on German Literature and Thought\
Some mention has already been made of the spread of philhellenism in Germany under the influence of Winckelmann\'92s writings. He was particularly influential on a number of literary figures and theorists. One famous study by a British scholar of German literature is devoted to this very theme. It is The Tymnny of Greece over Germany by E. M. Butler, first published in 1935 but reprinted many times because of its respected status.18 While there is still much to admire in Butler\'92s book, some reservations concerning its methodology and style must be made from a modern perspective. The general implication of the book (indicated by the use of the word \'93tyranny\'94 in the title) is that the influence of Greek culture was predominantly restrictive. Writers are frequently described as attempting to impose Greek ideals onto recalcitrant Germanic traditions, and only the writers that illustrate that trend are considered. Butler put herself inside the minds of the writers she was considering and imagined their struggles, but from the outset she made it clear that she intended to provide no sources for her assertions and quotations. Butler presents the character of Winckelmann in a particularly unfavorable light, verging on the homophobic, but it cannot be denied that she does reveal how extensive Winckelmann\'92s influence was, and I have taken some cues from her in my own reflections.\
In Germany one of the earliest leading writers to sing Winckelmann\'92s praises was Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803). It is known that he read Winckelmann\'92s History of the Art of Antiquity many times,19 and while admiring greatly the extent of Winckelmann\'92s achievement, he came eventually to criticize the priority he gave to the Greeks in the matter of aesthetic ideals. What he admired in Winckelmann was his emphasis on understanding art from its own intrinsic principles rather than through rationally imposed schemes.20 Despite his own strict Christian principles therefore, it seems that Herder tolerated Winckelmann\'92s particular sensitivity to male beauty because it enabled him to understand Greek culture more clearly. In 1767 Herder reviewed Winckelmann\'92s magnum opus anonymously, praising his passionate style but also noting how he had focused on the role of male friendship in the Greek cultural ideal.21 After Winckelmann\'92s death, Herder was also one of the first to eulogize Winckelmann, in his Hymn of Praise to My Countryman Johann Winckelmann on the News of His Murder. Ten years later, on the anniversary of Winckelmann\'92s death, he would include this, with a few alterations, in a work entitled Memorial to Johann Winckelmann. At times Herder addresses Winckelmann in very personal terms: \'93You stretched your arm out into the distance, to find friendship, the Greek friendship that you desired.\'9422\
Some time after Winckelmann\'92s death, the critic and dramatist Gotthold Ephraim Lessing was considering going to Rome. Many naturally assumed that he had been inspired to take this step by reading Winckelmann, but Lessing himself, while admitting his great admiration for the man, denied that there was any connection: \'93But do you know what really makes me angry? That everyone to whom I say Tm going on a journey to Rome\'92 immediately mentions Winckelmann. What has Winckelmann, and the plan that Winckelmann developed for himself in Italy, to do with my journey? No one can value the man more highly than I do, but nevertheless I wouldn\'92t like to be Winckelmann, just as I often don\'92t like being Lessing!\'9423\
Winckelmann had especially influenced Lessing\'92s work on aesthetics, Laoeoon, or the Boundaries between Painting and Poetry (1766). The existence of the sculpture known as Laoocon had been long known to Lessing, but it was Winckelmann\'92s remarks in the essay on imitation that inspired him to develop his own theory in relation to it. Lessing\'92s alternative title indicates the main focus of the argument in his work. Though he took a work of sculpture as his starting point, his interest was in the limitations of the visual arts in general with regard to the expression of emotions. Lor Lessing the visual arts can only show things coexistent in space, while poetry can present them consecutively in time.\
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was much more explicit than Herder in arguing for the close relationship between Winckelmann\'92s sexuality and his understanding of Greek art. If Winckelmann had continued his journey back to Germany and not gone to Trieste he would have met up again with his old friend Oeser in Leipzig and almost certainly would have met up with the eighteen-year-old Goethe, who was taking drawing lessons with him at the time. Von Wangenheim has pointed out that in his autobiography, Poetry and Truths written more than four decades later, Goethe was to recall how devastated he had been by the news of Winckelmann\'92s death.24 Live years before writing his autobiography Goethe wrote an extensive essay on Winckelmann entitled Winekelmann and His Century 25 It was conceived as part of a general project together with other like-minded writers to preserve some of the ideas and works that were going out of fashion with the rise of the Romantic movement. The ostensible occasion, or excuse, for the essay was that Winckelmann\'92s letters had come into Goethe\'92s hands. H. D. Berendis, a close friend of Winckelmann\'92s, had died and left Winckelmann\'92s correspondence to the Duchess of Saxony and Weimar, who had passed them on to Goethe with the request that they should be published.26\
In his essay Goethe dwells first on how Winckelmann had had to fight against unfavorable circumstances to achieve his goals. He was successful because he devoted his whole being to pursuing them. Lor Goethe, Winckelmann embodied the very virtues of the ancient Greeks\
themselves, holding fast to what was \'93immediate, true, and real\'94 (WJ^ 99). In the essay Goethe admits that the conversion became necessary for Winckelmann to gain access to authorities in the Catholic church who would allow him to study the treasures in their possession: according to Goethe, Winckelmann wore his Catholicism as a \'93disguising cloak\'94 (Maskenkleid, WJ^ 106). Then Goethe stresses how important male friendship is in understanding Winckelmann the man and his work: \'93Winckelmann felt himself born to a friendship of this kind, and not only capable of it, but also in need of it at the highest level\'94 (WJy 102). He praises Winckelmann\'92s emphasis on learning to appreciate art through direct experience of it and through the experience of beauty in nature, and he praises also Winckelmann\'92s contention that the highest ideal is the combination of friendship with ideal beauty: \'93If the needs of friendship and of beauty are nourished by the same object, then the happiness and gratitude of mankind seems to exceed all limits\'94 (WJy 103-4). Admirable in Winckelmann\'92s approach to art for Goethe is also the fact that he never considered a work in isolation from its full historical and cultural context. Winckelmann emphasized that works of art came not only from \'93different kinds of artists but also from different times, that one must take into consideration all aspects of the location, the period, and the accomplishments of the individual at the same time ...\'94 (WJy 110). Goethe also appreciated what Winckelmann had contributed to archaeological knowledge, in his writings on Herculaneum in particular, and his contribution to knowledge about precious stones in his catalogue of the Stosch collection. He shows himself to have been very much aware of an aspect of Winckelmann\'92s writing that provides a challenge to translators and editors: he was constantly adding to and changing his texts. For Goethe this was a quality that kept Winckelmann\'92s work fresh and exciting, and which he missed after Winckelmann\'92s death, because, if he had lived, \'93he would have re-written things again and again and always worked remote things and his newest experiences into his writings\'94 (W/, 118). In some further reflections on Winckelmann\'92s character Goethe brings out his simplicity and innocence combined with a passion for honesty. \'93Winckelmann was so completely the kind of person who is honest with himself and with others\'94 (WJy 123). Finally, Goethe focuses on the central restlessness and unease in Winckelmann\'92s character, which expressed itself in his constant longing for his absent friends, and which ultimately, in an aborted attempt to visit them again, resulted in his death.\
Apart from his essay on Winckelmann, it is clear that Goethe was influenced for the rest of his life by his discovery of the culture of ancient Greece. Butler provides an evocative and perceptive account of this in chapter 4 of her book. There are the examples of Goethe\'92s poems on Greek heroes and gods, such as Prometheus, Heracles, and Chronos, and of his play Iphigenia^ as well as the projects for plays, such as Achilleis,\
Euphrosyne, and Nausieaa, and of course the inclusion of the figure of Helena in Faust II.\
The influence of Greek culture on the writer Friedrich Schiller was mediated through his study of Lessing\'92s Laocoon and his acquaintance with the works of Goethe, especially Iphigenia. Butler points out that in his essay on Pathos of 1793 Schiller includes Winckelmann\'92s description of the Laocoon sculpture from the latter\'92s History of the Art of Antiquity. She adds that in the essay On Grace and Dignity of 1793 he also included another quotation from the same work by Winckelmann on the concept of grace, as well as some of Winckelmann\'92s descriptions of statues, such as the Belevedere Apollo and the so-called Borghese Gladiator.\
The poet Friedrich Holderlin (1770-1843) was more extensively interested in the gods of Greek mythology and ancient Greek literature than many of his contemporaries were. He idolized Schiller, and most of his early poetry was clearly written in imitation of the older man\'92s work. One of the theses he had to present for his master\'92s degree was greatly indebted to the ideas of Winckelmann. Its title was \'93Description of the History of the Fine Arts among the Greeks.\'94 In this he outlines Winckelmann\'92s ideas in the History of the Art of Antiquity, repeating many of his arguments verbatim.27\
As well as reflecting on Winckelmann\'92s influence on Goethe, Schiller, and Herder, Butler traces the reverberations of the enthusiasm for ancient Greek culture throughout the nineteenth century, and includes some reflections on Heinrich Heine\'92s satirical depiction of the gods of Greece as ghosts who had left Olympus and were now wandering unrecognized in the world.28\
Other writers who are mentioned by Butler as maintaining interest in Winckelmann\'92s vision of ancient Greece include the Austrian Franz Grillparzer (1791-1872) and the Swiss Carl Spitteler (1845-1924). Noteworthy as versions of Greek sources are Grillparzer\'92s plays Sappho (1881), The Golden Fleece (a trilogy, 1879), and The Waves of the Sea and of Fove (1831), which is a version of the legend of Hero and Leander. Spitteler, the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1920, is now mainly known for his modernized versions of Greek myths: the 2-volume epic Prometheus and Fpimetheus (1881) and Olympic Spring (1905). His writings do not owe a direct debt to Winckelmann but provide clear evidence of the continuing relevance of Greek culture in German-speaking lands. Influences of Winckelmann\'92s concept of imitation have also been traced in the ideas of Stefan George (1868-1933).29\
Winckelmann\'92s Influence on Walter Pater\
Winckelmann\'92s writings exerted indisputable influence on the English critic Walter Pater (1839-94), famous especially for his writings on the\
Renaissance. In 1867, he published an essay on Winckelmann in the Westminster Review under the title \'93Winckelmann, Et ego in Arcadia fiii.\'94 This was republished in his later volume entitled The Renaissance (1873 and 1893). Pater was writing from his knowledge of Winckelmann in the original German: the first English edition of his History of the Art of Antiquity only came out in an American edition in 1856, with a full version not appearing until 1873, long after Pater had written his original essay.30 Pater takes as his starting point in the essay Goethe\'92s study of Winckelmann, and it is clear that he is concerned to explore not only Winckelmann\'92s concept of ideal beauty but also his life and character. At several points in his essay Pater emphasizes that Winckelmann\'92s passion for Greek antiquity was closely bound up with his emotionally and sexually charged relationships to younger men. It must be pointed out at this stage that homoeroticism also undoubtedly motivated in part Pater\'92s interest in Winckelmann. Many of Pater\'92s works focus on male beauty and love and friendship between men, sometimes in a purely Platonic way but often with oblique sexual inferences.31 Pater sets Winckelmann\'92s passionate personal relationships in contrast to what he interprets as his ideal of unemotional, distant beauty. He saw Winckelmann as desexualizing Greek art, but the descriptions by Winckelmann of beautiful young male bodies in several of the essays in the present volume belie Pater\'92s interpretation. Potts sums up how Pater misrepresented Winckelmann\'92s holistic emotional response to works of art: \'93The Hellenistic ideal cultivated by Winckelmann, which seemed to promise a wholeness of self integrated with its desires, could only in Pater\'92s view do this at the cost of excluding the fullest, if painfully contradictory, resonances of modern desire.\'9432 Later, after comparing closely a passage from Pater with a similar passage by Winckelmann in the History of the Art of Antiquity, Potts concludes: \'93If we consider the overall picture of the Greek ideal that Pater extracts from Winckelmann, we see echoed something of the effect of stilled vitality. . . .\'9433 And similarly Pater repressed from his view of Winckelmann the latter\'92s sense of the violence and struggle under the apparently calm surface in Greek sculpture (as in his reflections on the Laocoon group) and Winckelmann\'92s celebration of the artistic embodiment of the Greek notion of freedom and its struggle against oppression.34\
The Essays in the Present Volume\
In his introductory remarks to the reprint of the Kleine Sehriften, Vorreden, Entwiirfe (2002) Max Kunze stresses that in many writings, specifically in Thoughts on the Imitation of Greek Works in Tainting and the Art of Sculpture, Winckelmann was not writing with scholars in mind but more for lovers of art and artists (KS, vii). When Winckelmann moved to Rome his most common readers were the numerous foreigners\
undertaking trips to Rome and the rest of Italy. The many projects for essays\'97long and short, and some of them left unfinished\'97which he worked on while in Rome, were also aimed at a broader non-academic public. It is from this group of works that many of the shorter pieces and fragments in the present volume have been selected. He did hope, however, that if any scholars happened to read his works, they would be able thereby to develop and broaden the scope of their knowledge (KS, viii). It is as a result of these concerns of Winckelmann that many of his works are written in a style that cannot find its counterpart in modern histories of art, architecture, and archaeology, and are clearly designed to win the reader\'92s attention and make him or her feel at ease. There is no scope to analyze his style in detail in this context, but easily noticeable examples of his encouragement to the reader are the occasions when he invites the reader directly to look at something together with him.\
Hellmut Sichtermann, in his introduction written in 1987 but included in the same 2002 German edition of the shorter writings, reflects on the judgments of the original editor, Walther Rehm, who died in 1963 before the volume could be published. Rehm believed that many of Winckelmann\'92s longer works, when regarded as scholarly writings, had become outdated and surpassed by subsequent research, as is the way with most academic research. But he also believed that Winckelmann\'92s shorter writings reveal him at his best as a writer and educator (KS, xi). Sichtermann clearly believes that Rehm greatly underestimated Winckelmann\'92s continuing influence and importance and cites a large number of recent studies in the field of art history especially to prove his point (xii-xix). Sichtermann does, however, admit that, as is the way with archaeological research, Winckelmann\'92s own archaeological findings are mainly interesting today only in their historical context. The methodology he developed for interpreting these findings is, however, of lasting interest. In reading the essays today one should bear in mind an important point emphasized by Sichtermann: many of the words and concepts used by Winckelmann have undergone several changes of meaning and usage since his time, and this has led many critics to misconceive his intentions (KS, xxxii). The present translator has attempted as far as possible to convey the meanings intended by Winckelmann, which has resulted in rendering some of his words differently than one would render their usage in modern German. Winckelmann was also not always consistent in his own usage, but the translator has endeavored to be as consistent as is compatible with a clear understanding of Winckelmann\'92s intentions. Concerning how one should read the essays nowadays, Sichtermann suggests that one should read them without resort to any academic exegesis, allowing them instead to communicate their meaning directly to the reader (xli).\
One further point needs to be born in mind while reading the essays, which is emphasized by Else Rehm in her foreword to the same edition of\
the Kleine Schriften (vi). Many of the artworks referred to and described by Winckelmann are no longer to be found in the locations mentioned by him. This is true of a large number of Winckelmann\'92s writings. Some information on present locations of certain works is provided in the commentary in the Kleine Sehriften.\
There now follow brief introductions to the essays included in the present volume in the order in which they appear.\
Thoughts on the Imitation of Greek Works in Painting and the Art of Sculpture\
The present translation is of the version in the Kleine Sehriften, which is itself based on a facsimile of the first edition, as it is the only edition known to have been supervised by Winckelmann and known to correspond in all respects to his intentions (KSy 324). Full details of this are provided in the commentary in the Kleine Sehriften, which is based on Rehm\'92s original notes complemented by Sichtermann. The work was written during the period immediately after Winckelmann\'92s move to Dresden and under the influence of his friend, the painter Adam Friedrich Oeser. It was written after frequent visits to the Dresden Gallery, which since 1754 had also housed the Sistine Madonna. The original edition contained three illustrations by Oeser. The essay was written quickly in the spring of 1755 and published in the middle of May 1755. Only fifty to sixty copies were printed.\
Open Letter on Thoughts on the Imitation of Greek Works in\
Painting and the Art of Sculpture\
and\
Explanation of Thoughts on the Imitation of Greek Works in Painting and the Art of Sculpture and Response to the Open Letter on These Thoughts\
When it became clear that a reprint of the first essay would be possible, Winckelmann started work almost immediately on an imaginary critique of his essay, which he described as an open letter. He then added a further essay, which he described as an \'93Explanation\'94 and in which he defended himself against the imaginary critique. He was due to depart for Italy in June 1755, but postponed his departure till September, to enable him to complete the two essays during July and August. The reprint appeared in April 1756.\
More Mature Thoughts on the Imitation of the Ancients with Respect to Drawing and the Art of Sculpture\
This short fragment was not published until 1811, but is assumed to have been written in the period of 1756 to 1757. It has often been published together with the previous three essays.\
Description of the Most Excellent Paintings in the Dresden Gallery\
The present translation is of the version in Kleine Schriften, which is based on a copy of the version in the Goethe Museum, Diisseldorf. The original text was probably written towards the end of 1752 after visits to the Dresden gallery, which Winckelmann undertook while living in Nothnitz. It was written in the form of an open letter for the education of young noblemen. Winckelmann wrote the piece specifically for the young Count Heinrich von Biinau. He had apparently intended to write a second part in the spring of 1753, but did not do so. Many of the works of art referred to by Winckelmann have been lost or were destroyed in the Second World War. Details of these works are provided in the Commentary in Kleine Sehriften.\
It has been argued by Helmut Pfotenhauer in his article Winckelmann und Heinse,\'9435 that there is evidence in Winckelmann\'92s fragmentary essay on paintings in the Dresden Gallery of the technique he was to develop more in later works of going beyond a mere description of the images in paintings and their identification. Pfotenhauer argues that he was already beginning to suggest interpretations and psychological depths, to develop ways of perceiving that did not depend on what was explicitly depicted but was only hinted at. Pfotenhauer particularly emphasizes the idea put forward by Winckelmann in the essay that, just as in describing a painting one should not try to put everything into words, so the painter himself should not make everything explicit.\
Reflections on Art\
For the translations of these fragments the texts in the Kleine Sehriften have been used, which are based on the manuscripts in the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris. The dates of their composition are unknown.\
Recalling the Observation of Works of Art\
This essay was the first of a number that Winckelmann wrote for the journal Bibliothek der sehmen Wissensehaften und der freien Kiinste, Leipzig. They made his name more widely known in Germany. This essay was first published in 1759.\
On Grace in Works of Art\
This essay was also published in the Bibliothek der sehonen Wissensehaften und der freien Kiinste in 1759.\
Description of the Torso in the Belvedere in Rome\
This is another essay published in the Bibliothek der sehonen Wissensehaften und der freien Kiinste in 1759.\
Treatise on the Capacity for Sensitivity to the Beautiful in Art and the Method of Teaching It\
Winckelmann notified his publisher G. C. Walther in Dresden in January 1763 of his intention to send him the treatise. He sent the manuscript, which is no longer extant, to the publisher in June, and it was published in the autumn. The present translation is of the text in the Kleine Schriften, which is based on the first edition.\
Remarks on the Architecture of the Old Temples at Agrigento in Sicily\
The manuscript of this essay is not extant. Winckelmann sent it on June 13, 1759 to the Bibliothek der schonen Wissenschaften und der freien Kiinste, which published it in volume 2 of that year.\
Preliminary Report on Remarks on the Architecture of the Ancients\
Winckelmann sent this essay to Count Wackerbarth in December 1760, with the intention of dedicating it to him, but the count died before publication. The essay was eventually published in 1762 by Johann Gottfried Dyck, Leipzig, with several additions and a dedication to the \'93Kurprinz,\'94 later \'93Kurfurst,\'94 of Saxony.\
Open Letter on the Herculanean Excavations\
Winckelmann\'92s extensive essay is probably the only work on the subject from the eighteenth century that is at all well known today. It concerns the effects of the eruption of Vesuvius on the 24 and 25 August, 79 BC, which destroyed within a matter of days a number of towns in the area to the south of Naples. The eruption buried under a mass of mud, ashes, and other materials the towns of Pompeii, Herculaneum, Stabae, Oplontis, and other smaller settlements. Streets, squares, buildings, gardens, and the people themselves together with their animals were buried for centuries, and no one knew any more the exact locations of the towns. Then in the late seventeenth century some clues were found by chance. In 1689 ancient inscriptions were found during the building of a water channel in the Pompeii area, and in the early eighteenth century ruined houses were discovered near the sea at Portici, and at Resina, further inland, the ruins of the theater of Herculaneum were found while digging a well. For a long time no systematic excavations were conducted on the sites. Serious excavations began in Herculaneum in 1738. Not until 1748 were extensive excavations conducted in Pompeii and not until 1739 in Stabiae. The history of the subsequent excavations and of the reports on them is complex, as is the story of how Winckelmann came to conduct his own investigations. A fully detailed account is provided in the edition\
of Winckelmann\'92s essay by Stephanie-Gerrit Bruer and Max Kunze that is included in the Herculanische Schriften.36\
Winckelmann\'92s Open Letter on the Herenlanean Excavations was published in October 1762, and sold well. It provides a detailed description of the excavations, topography, and history of Herculaneum. He provides some comments on the towns of Pompeii and Stabiae, but the main focus is on Herculaneum. This was not of course the first time that Winckelmann had decided to present one of his works in the form of an open letter, and it was certainly not novel at the time. Several writers used the concept to present factual reports in a popular form. In this work Winckelmann managed to combine a systematic scientific analysis with a literary style that is occasionally witty and often poetic. It also includes sarcastic comments on other so-called experts. The aim was to make the work both informative and entertaining for the lay reader. Contemporary critics showed appreciation of this style. Thus in the Literaturbriefe of 1763, cited in the introduction to the Bruer and Kunze edition (38), he was praised as one of the rare German writers who were able to combine scholarly methods and a profound knowledge of antiquity with an impressive style.\
In few of his published works (as compared with his letters and literary remains) did Winckelmann attack so aggressively his academic colleagues, especially the intellectual elite of Naples. Compared with some of these Italian writers who had published studies of Herculaneum, such as Ottavio Bayardi and the Marchese Don Niccolo Marcello de Venuto, Winckelmann can be praised for his brevity, precise focus on relevant facts, and the clear structure of the whole study. He divided the work into four main parts: the topography of the towns destroyed by the eruption of Vesuvius; the circumstances of the eruption and how the towns were destroyed; the rediscovery of the buried towns; and the history of the excavations together with the methodology employed. There is also an account of the collection of found objects in the museum at Portico and a report on the Herculaneum Academy. He focuses his attention most extensively on the actual finds. Especially noteworthy are his comments on the mural paintings from Herculaneum and Pompeii. His approach differs considerably from that of his predecessors, who described individual paintings in great detail. Indeed Winckelmann describes them only briefly, but provides many observations revealing perceptive insights. No writer before him had attempted this. For example, he comments on the techniques used in the paintings, explains the methods of restoration used, and reveals clear cases in which images had been falsified by more recent artists. Apart from commenting on the sculpture and paintings, however, he also writes in considerable detail on objects on which nothing had been previously published, such as utensils and other antiquarian objects. There are detailed descriptions of candlesticks, dishes, kitchen-equipment, hairpins, and surgical instruments. Winckelmann was not satisfied with mere\
descriptions of the objects but provided also some reflections on aesthetic aspects, encouraging his contemporaries to improve their artistic taste by imitating them. Furthermore, about one third of the work is devoted to a study of the papyri found at Herculaneum.\
Winckelmann\'92s essay, together with other popular accounts at the time, brought about a wave of interest throughout Europe in antique style and design. Many antiquarian societies were formed, and more concerted efforts were made to investigate such sites and document them more precisely. The success of this work prompted Winckelmann to prepare a second edition of it, reworked and expanded, and with this in mind he undertook a journey to Naples in 1764. His findings there induced him to modify his plan: he published not a reworking of the essay but a continuation of it. This was published in the autumn of 1764 as Reports on the Most Reeent Hereulanean Discoveries, but it is too long to include in the present volume.\
The translation of the first essay, which is included here, is of the text in the Bruer and Kunze edition, which is based on the first edition published by Georg Conrad Walther in Dresden in 1762. The Bruer and Kunze edition includes various other related short texts in the commentary or as footnotes. The present translation incorporates neither these nor Winckelmann\'92s own footnotes. Bruer and Kunze\'92s edition has not corrected Winckelmann\'92s errors nor has it modified his dialect variations. Such details have not been reflected in the English translation.\
As with the other essays in this volume, the aim of the translator has been to provide an easily accessible text for the intelligent English reader. Thus while some of Winckelmann\'92s ambiguities and inconsistencies have been retained, choices had often to be made in favor of clarity.\
A Note on the Organization of the Present Volume\
The overall intention in publishing the present volume is to provide a selection of Winckelmann\'92s writings that reflects the breadth of his interests, and especially in the fields of art, architecture, and archaeology. The structure of the whole reflects these three major areas. (This has meant excluding Winckelmann\'92s writings on coins and gems.) The first four pieces in the volume are usually published together and in the order presented here, under the general title of the first essay, Thoughts on the Imitation of Greek Works in Tainting and the Art of Sculpture, and this, apart from his massive History of the Art of Antiquity, is the work for which he is most well known. It seems thus fitting that it be given pride of place at the beginning of the present selection of essays on the visual arts. Winckelmann\'92s long first account of the archaeological excavations of Herculaneum, the Open Letter on the Hereulanean Discoveries, which makes up the whole of the third part, was also first published in 1762.\
In order to provide a readable text for serious students and general readers, it was decided to omit all of Winckelmann\'92s at times lengthy footnotes and later additions to the texts of some of the works, as they provide mainly additional evidence for points made clearly already: the essential perceptions and arguments remain intact. The translator\'92s own endnotes have also been kept to a necessary minimum for similar reasons. It has been assumed that the reader will be familiar with most of the more well-known artists, philosophers, Greek authors, and mythological figures, or can nowadays trace them easily on the Internet. Notes have been included, however, on some persons and works, etc., that are important to understanding Winckelmann\'92s texts, especially in cases where it may be more difficult to trace them. Where Winckelmann has not indicated clearly the sources for quotations from Greek, Latin, and other languages, his references are clarified in the notes. Winckelmann usually included lengthy dedications at the beginning of his publications, and these have either been shortened or omitted. Winckelmann\'92s spellings of personal names and place names often differ from the standard modern spellings, and they have been brought into line with modern usage. He sometimes made errors in his attributions to sources, and where possible these have been corrected, but his occasional errors in quotations have not been altered.\
On Art\
Thoughts on the Imitation of Greek Works in Painting and the Art of Sculpture (1755-56)\
Vos examp laria Graeca\
Nocturna versate manuy versate diurnal.\
\'97Horace1\
To\
His Most Serene Highness, the Great and Powerful Prince and Master,\
Lord Friedrich August,\
King of Poland, etc., and Elector Of Saxony, etc.2\
Good taste, which is spreading more and more throughout the world, first started to develop in the climate of Greece. All the inventions of foreign peoples came to Greece only as the first seed, as it were, and acquired a different character and form in the country that Minerva, it is said, allocated as an abode for the Greeks, above all other countries, because of the temperate seasons she found there, and because it was a country that would bring forth wise men.\
The taste with which this nation imbued its works has remained unique to it. It has rarely spread far from Greece without losing something, and in remote climatic regions it was only recognized late. It was without doubt completely foreign to northern climes at the time when the two arts of which the Greeks are the great teachers found few admirers: at the time when the most admirable works of Correggio were hung up in the royal stables in Stockholm as a covering for the windows.3\
And it has to be admitted that the really fortunate period was the reign of the great August, in which the arts were introduced into Saxony as a foreign colony. Under his successor, the German Titus, they have made the country their home, and it is through them that good taste has become common.4\
It is a permanent memorial to the greatness of this monarch that in order to develop good taste the greatest treasures of Italy, as well as whatever perfect works of painting have been produced in other countries,\
have been exhibited before the eyes of the world. And finally, his enthusiasm to immortalize the arts did not rest, till works that were truly and unmistakably those of Greek masters, and what is more were of the first order, had been provided for artists to imitate.\
The purest wellsprings of art have been opened, and happy the man who finds them and enjoys them. To seek these wellsprings one must travel to Athens, and Dresden will henceforth be Athens for artists.\
The only way for us to become great, and, if indeed it is possible, inimitable, is through the imitation of the ancients, and what someone said of Homer, that the man who has learned to understand him well learns to admire him, is also true of the works of art by the ancients, especially of the Greeks. One must have become as familiar with them as with a friend, to be able to find the Laocoon5 as inimitable as Homer. Through such close acquaintance one will be able to judge as Nicomachus did of Zeuxis\'92s6 Helena: \'93Take my eyes,\'94 he said to an ignorant person who wanted to find fault with the picture, \'93and then she will appear to you to be a goddess.\'94\
With these eyes Michelangelo, Raphael, and Poussin looked at the works of the ancients. They drew good taste from its source, and Raphael drew it in the country itself, where he taught himself. It is known that he sent young people to Greece to draw the remains of antiquity for him.\
A statue by an ancient Roman hand will always stand in the same relationship to a Greek original in the way that Virgil\'92s Dido with her retinue, compared with Diana among the Oreiades, relates to Homer\'92s Nausicaa, which the former attempted to imitate.\
Laocoon was for the artists in ancient Rome the same as it is for us: it represents the rules of Polyclitus,7 a complete set of rules for art.\
There is no need for me to mention that certain careless mistakes are to be found in the most famous works of the Greek artists. The dolphin that has been added to the Medici Venus next to the playing children, and the work of Dioscorides, except for the main figure in his carving of Diomedes with the palladion, are examples of this. It is known that the work on the reverse sides of the finest coins of the Egyptian and Syrian kings rarely matches in quality the heads of these kings. Great artists also reveal wisdom through their negligence: they cannot make a mistake without at the same time teaching us something. One should look at their works as Lucian claimed to have looked at Phidias\'92s8 Jupiter, looking at Jupiter himself and not at the footstool.\
Connoisseurs and imitators of Greek works find not only the most beautiful aspects of nature in their masterpieces but also much more than nature: that is, certain ideally beautiful aspects of it, which, as an ancient interpreter of Plato teaches us, have been created from images conceived only in the mind.\
The most beautiful human body in our world would probably not resemble the most beautiful Greek body in the way that Iphicles did\
his brother Hercules. The influence of a gentle and pure climate had an effect on the earliest development of the Greeks, but it was physical exercise at an early stage that provided this development with a noble form. Consider a young Spartan, who was given birth to by a hero and a heroine, and who was never restricted by swaddling clothes in infancy, had slept on the ground from his seventh year on, and had practiced wrestling and swimming since childhood. Place him next to a young Sybarite of our times and then judge which of the two the artist would choose as the epitome of a young Theseus, an Achilles, or even indeed a Bacchus. If it were modeled on the latter it would be a Theseus among roses, but if based on the former it would be a Theseus developed in the flesh, as a Greek painter expressed his judgment of two different representations of this.\
For all young Greeks the great games were a powerful spur to physical exercises, and the regulations required a preparation period of ten months for the Olympic Games, in Elis itself, the very place where they were held. The greatest prizes were not always won by men, but mostly by juveniles, as is evidenced in Pindar\'92s odes. It was the greatest wish of young men to become like the divine Diagoras.\
Consider the fast Indian who pursues a deer on foot. How swiftly run his body fluids, how supple and quick his nerves and muscles become, and how light the whole structure of his body becomes. That is how Homer creates his heroes for us, and he identifies his Achilles by his fleetness of foot.\
Their bodies acquired through these exercises the large masculine contour that the Greek masters gave to their statues, without the quality of self-importance or superfluous fat. The young Spartans had to show themselves naked to the ephors9 every ten days, who imposed a stricter diet on those who were beginning to put on fat. It was indeed one of Pythagoras\'92s laws that one should prevent all superfluous acquisition of fat to the body. Perhaps this was the reason why among the Greeks of the most ancient times the young men who presented themselves for the wrestling competition were allowed only food made with milk during the period of preliminary exercises.\
Bad conditions of the body of all kinds were carefully avoided, and as Alcibiades did not want to learn to blow the flute when he was young, because it distorted his face, young Athenians followed his example.\
What is more, the Greeks\'92 whole way of dressing was such that it did not impose the least restraint on the process of nature. The growth of a beautiful form did not suffer from the various styles and parts of our present clothes, which squeeze and pinch us, especially on the neck, hips, and thighs. Even the fair sex among the Greeks were not aware of any anxious restraint in their finery: young Spartan women wore such light and short clothes that they were known as \'93hip-revealers.\'94\
It is also known what care the Greeks took to produce beautiful children. In his Callipaedia, Quillet10 does not reveal as many ways of achieving this as were common among them. They went so far as to try to make black eyes out of blue ones. Also to promote this aim, beauty contests were established. They were held in Elis, and the prize consisted of weapons, which were hung up in the Temple of Minerva. There could be no lack of thorough and learned judges in these contests, as, according to Aristotle\'92s report, the Greeks arranged for their children to be given drawing lessons, primarily because they believed that it made them more skillful in observing and judging the beauty of the body.\
The fine racial characteristics of the inhabitants of most of the Greek islands, which have nevertheless been mixed with such different foreign races, and the excellent charms of the fair sex there, especially on the isle of Scios, lead one also to the justifiable supposition that both sexes were beautiful among their ancestors, who claimed to be older than the moon.\
There are now whole peoples among whom it is no advantage to be beautiful, because everyone is beautiful. Travel writers are unanimous in saying this of the Georgians, and the same is reported to be true of the Kabardinkans, a nation in Crimean Tartary.\
The illnesses that destroy beauty in so many cases, and spoil the most noble forms, were still unknown to the Greeks. In the writings of the Greek doctors there can be found no trace of smallpox, and no displayed image of a Greek, which Homer often conceived in the smallest details, includes such distinctive features as pockmarks.\
Venereal disease and its offspring, rachitis, were not yet wreaking havoc against the beautiful aspects of nature among the Greeks.11\
Generally everything that had been inspired and taught by nature and art, from birth to the fullness of growth, on the forming of the body, on the maintenance, development, and adornment of this form, was carried out and applied for the benefit of the beautiful natural condition of the ancient Greeks, and gives us cause to assert that with the greatest probability the beauty of their bodies was superior to ours.\
The most perfect of nature\'92s creatures would be only partly and incompletely known to the artists in a country where nature was restricted in many of its effects by harsh laws, such as in Egypt, which is claimed to be the fatherland of the arts and sciences. In Greece however, where people were devoted to enjoyment and pleasure from the days of their youth, and where a certain modern civic prosperity had never limited any freedom of morals, natural beauty revealed itself openly, providing much instruction for the artists.\
The artists\'92 school was in the gymnasiums, where young people, who had to cover themselves out of modesty in public, performed their physical exercises completely naked. The wise man and the artist went there. Socrates went there to teach Charmides, Autolycus, and Lysis, and\
Phidias went there to enrich his art from these beautiful creatures. There one could learn about the movements of the muscles, and the twisting movements of the body, and study the outlines of the body or its contours from the imprints the young wrestlers had made in the sand.\
The most beautiful physical nudity revealed itself here in such varied, true, and noble attitudes and positions, which a hired model, as presented in our academies, cannot be made to adopt.\
Inner feeling brings about the quality of truth, and the draftsman who wishes to provide his academic studies with that quality will not achieve even a shadow of it without compensating in some way himself for what the unmoved and indifferent soul of the model cannot feel or express by an action characteristic of a certain feeling or emotion.\
The introductions to many of Plato\'92s conversations, the start of which he set in the gymnasiums of Athens, provide us with an image of the noble souls of the young men, and lead us to assume from this that the actions and positions in these places and in their physical exercises were of the same kind.\
The most beautiful young people danced unclothed in the theater, and Sophocles, the great Sophocles, was the first who in his youth provided this spectacle for his fellow citizens. Phryne bathed herself during the Eleusinian games before the eyes of all Greeks, and when she stepped out of the water she became for artists the epitome of Venus Anadyomene. And it is known that the young girls of Sparta danced completely naked at a festival before the eyes of young people. Although this may appear strange, it becomes more acceptable when one considers that Christians in the early church, both men and women, were submerged at the same time, without any covering, in the same font.\
Thus every festival among the Greeks was an opportunity for artists to acquaint themselves with the beauty of nature most thoroughly.\
The Greeks, in their humanity, and because of their flourishing concept of freedom, had not wanted to introduce any bloody spectacles, or if such events had been common in the Ionic part of Asia, as some people believe, then they had long ago been brought to an end. Antiochus Epiphanes, the King of Syria, ordered swordsmen from Rome, and had the Greeks watch spectacles with these unfortunate men, which were abhorrent to them at first. With time they lost their human sensitivity, and these spectacles also became schools for the artists. A certain Cresilas studied his dying swordsman here, \'93in whom it was possible to observe how much of his soul still survived.\'94\
These frequent opportunities to observe nature caused the Greek artists to go even further: they began to develop certain general concepts of the beautiful aspects both of individual parts of the body and of the proportions of the whole, which would be superior to nature itself. Their original image was a mental concept of nature developed only in the mind.\
In this way Raphael created his Galathea. This can be seen from his letter to Count Balthasar Castiglione: \'93As the principles of beauty are so seldom realized in a woman, I employ a certain idea in my imagination.\'94\
According to such concepts, which were far superior to the common form of material objects, the Greeks created gods and human beings. On their gods and goddesses the forehead and nose formed almost one straight line. The heads of famous women on Greek coins have exactly the same profiles, although in that case it was not necessary to work according to ideal concepts. Or one could assume that this way of creating was as characteristic of the ancient Greeks as were flat noses among the Kalmyks and small eyes among the Chinese. The large eyes of Greek heads on stones and coins could support this supposition.\
Roman empresses were modeled by the Greeks on their coins according to these very concepts: the head of a Livia and an Agrippina has exactly the same profile as an Artemisia and a Cleopatra.\
In all these cases one notices that the law laid down by the Thebans for their artists, that \'93nature was to be imitated as best as possible or a penalty would ensue,\'94 was also treated as a law by other artists in Greece. Whenever the gentle Greek profile could not be lent verisimilitude without some disadvantage, then they followed what was true to nature, as can be seen on the beautiful head of Livia, the daughter of the emperor Titus, made by Evodus.\
The law that stipulated, however, \'93that figures should both resemble persons and at the same time be more beautiful\'94 was always the highest law that Greek artists recognized as governing them, and presupposes necessarily the master\'92s goal of attaining a more beautiful and more perfect nature. Polygnotus always observed it.\
When it is reported of some artists therefore that they proceed as Praxiteles did, who modeled his Cnidian Venus on the woman Cratina, whom he slept with, then I believe that it must have occurred without deviating from those great laws of art already mentioned. Sensory beauty provided the artist with natural beauty, but ideal beauty provided him with the sublime qualities. From the former he took what was human and from the latter, what was divine.\
If someone has sufficient insight to look into the innermost recesses of art, then he will very often find, through comparison of all the rest of the structure of Greek figures with most of the modern ones, especially those in which nature has been followed rather than the taste of the ancients, beautiful qualities that have not yet been sufficiently discovered.\
In most of the figures by more modern masters it is possible to see on those parts of the body that have been subjected to pressure small, too clearly indicated wrinkles in the skin. On the other hand, where such wrinkles are to be found in parts pressed in the same way on Greek figures they arise one out of the other in a gentle curve like waves, in such\
a way that these wrinkles seem to form a whole and together give the impression of fine pressure. These masterpieces show us a skin that is not taut but gently drawn across healthy flesh, which fills it without being stretched by swelling, and with every bending of the fleshy part follows its direction in a uniform way. The skin never causes, as it does on our bodies, any particular small wrinkles that are unrelated to the flesh.\
In such ways modern works differ from those of the Greeks through a large number of small impressions, and through far too many dimples made far too perceptible to the senses, which, when they are to be found in the works of the ancients, are indicated gently and with a sense of economy, as was their way, in the more perfect and more complete nature conceived of by the Greeks, and are often only noticed by people with an educated feeling for such things.\
There is always the probability in this case that in the development of the beautiful Greek body, as in the works of their masters, there was more unity in the whole structure, a noble combination of the parts, a greater measure of fullness, without the lean tensions and the many sunken hollows of our bodies.\
One can go no further than speak of probability. But this probability deserves the attention of our artists and connoisseurs of art, the more so, as it is necessary to free reverence for the Greek monuments from the prejudice attached to it by many, so as not to give the appearance of bestowing some merit on the imitation of them just because they are moldy and old.\
This point, on which the opinions of the artists are divided, would require a more thorough treatment than is possible within the aims of the present work.\
It is known that the great Bernini was one of those who disputed the Greeks\'92 preference for a partly more beautiful nature and a partly more idealized beauty in their figures. Moreover he was also of the opinion that nature understood how to impart the necessary beauty to all its parts, and that art consisted in finding it. He boasted of having put aside a premature judgment that he made at first sight of the charm of the Medici Venus, which, however, he observed in nature after laborious study on various occasions.\
So it was the Venus that taught him how to discover beauty in nature, which he had previously thought was only to be found in the Venus itself, and without the Venus he would not have sought such beauty in nature. Does it not follow from this that it is easier to discover the beauty of Greek statues than the beauty of nature, and that the former is moving and not so dispersed but is more combined into one thing than the latter? The study of nature must therefore be at least a longer and more laborious way to knowledge of perfect beauty than is the study of antiquities. And Bernini could not have shown the shortest way to attain this to\
young artists, to whom he always preferred to point out the most beautiful aspects of nature.\
The imitation of beauty in nature either is directed at a single model or involves the collection of observations from various individual models and unifies them. The former means making a close copy, a portrait, and is the way the Dutch make their forms and figures. The latter is the way to discover what is generally beautiful and to make ideal images of it, and this is the path that the Greeks took. The difference, however, between them and us is this: the Greeks could obtain these images even when they were not taken from the more beautiful bodies, through the opportunity they had daily to observe beauty in nature, which, however, does not reveal itself to us every day, and rarely in a way that the artist desires.\
Nature does not produce so easily for us such a perfect body as that of the Antinous Admirandus,12 and the highest form of imagination cannot conceive anything greater than the superhuman proportions of a beautiful divinity embodied in the Vatican Apollo.13 That which nature, the mind, and art was capable of producing lies there for all to see.\
I believe that imitation of this can teach us to be knowledgeable more quickly, because here in one object can be found the essence of that which is distributed throughout nature, and what is more it can teach us how nature at its most beautiful can boldly and wisely excel itself. It will teach us to think and conceive with assurance by observing the definition of the highest boundaries of human and also divine beauty.\
If the artist builds upon this basis and allows the Greek laws of beauty to guide his hand and his senses, then he is on the path that will lead him safely to the imitation of nature. The concepts of the whole and of perfection in nature in antiquity will purify him of the concept of division of nature into parts as we see it and make him more aware of it. By discovering the beauty of these parts he will learn how to combine them with perfect beauty, and with the help of the sublime forms that are ever-present to him he will himself become an embodiment of a law.\
Only then and not before can the artist, especially the painter, devote himself to imitating nature, when for example art permits him to leave aside considerations of the marble, as in the case of garments, and allow himself more freedom, as Poussin did.14 For, as Michelangelo says, \'93He who constantly follows others will never get ahead, and he who does not know how to make something good out of himself will not make good use of things belonging to others.\'94\
Souls to whom nature has been well disposed,\
Quibus arte benigna Et meliore luto finxit praecordia Titan15\
have a clear path before them to become original people.\
It is in this sense that one is to take de Piles when he reports that Raphael, at the time when death was overtaking him, endeavored to neglect marble and follow nature completely. The true taste of the ancients would have constantly accompanied him through ordinary nature, and all his observations of it would have become, by a form of chemical transformation, that which constituted his essential being, his soul.\
Perhaps he would have provided his paintings with more diversity, larger canvasses, more coloring, more light and shade. However, his figures would always have been less valued for this than for their noble contour, and for the sublime soul, which he had learned to represent from the Greeks.\
Nothing could demonstrate more clearly the advantage of imitating the ancients over imitating nature than if one were to take two young people with equally fine talent and have one of them study the works of antiquity and the other nature alone. The latter would represent nature as he found it. As an Italian he would probably paint figures like Caravaggio; as a Dutchman, if he is lucky, like Jacob Jordaens; and as a Frenchman, like Stella. The former, however, would represent nature as it demands to be represented, and paint figures like Raphael.\
Even if the imitation of nature could provide the artist with everything, it is certain that correctness of contour could not be acquired in that way. This can be learned only from the Greeks.\
The finest contour combines or defines all aspects of what is most beautiful in nature and of the qualities of ideal beauty in the figures of the Greeks. Or rather it is the highest concept in both cases. Euphranor, who distinguished himself after the time of Zeuxis, is considered to be the first who lent it a more sublime style.\
Many modern artists have attempted to imitate Greek outlines, but almost no one has succeeded in doing so. The great Rubens is far from the Greek sense of outline for bodies, and farthest in those of his works that he made before his journey to Italy, and before studying antiquities.\
The line that divides the fullness of nature from what is superfluous in it is very fine, and the greatest modern masters have deviated too far on both sides from this not always clearly distinguishable borderline. The artist who tries to avoid an emaciated contour succumbs to over-ornate-ness, and the one who wants to avoid this succumbs to plainness.\
Michelangelo is perhaps the only one of whom one could say that he matched the achievements of antiquity, but only in his strong muscular figures and in bodies of the heroic period, not in figures of gentle youths or women, which become Amazons in his hands.\
The Greek artist, however, balanced his outline very delicately in all his figures, also in his finest and most demanding works, such as those on carved stone. One only has to look at the Diomedes and the Perseus by Dioscorides, and the Hercules with Iole made by the hand of Teucer, to admire these inimitable Greeks.\
Parrhasius is generally considered to be the most accomplished in the mastery of contour.\
And beneath the garments of the Greek figures the masterly contour is still prominent and is clearly the main concern of the artist, who reveals the beautiful build of the body through the marble as though through a Coan16 garment.\
The Agrippina, made in the high style, and the three Vestals among the royal antiquities in Dresden, deserve to be cited here as supreme models. The Agrippina is presumably not the mother of Nero but the older Agrippina, the wife of Germanicus. It is very similar to a standing statue claimed to be of this Agrippina in the anteroom of the library of St. Mark\'92s in Venice. The figure we are considering is sitting, larger than natural size, with its head supported on the right hand. The beautiful face reveals a soul, which is sunk in reflection and appears because of worries and sorrow to lack feeling for all outer sensations. It is possible to surmise that the artist wanted to represent the heroine in that moment of dismay when she was informed of her banishment to the isle of Pandataria.\
The three Vestals17 are doubly entitled to our admiration. They are the first great discoveries from Herculaneum.18 But what makes us value them more highly is the grand style of their garments. In this aspect of art all three, especially the one that is larger than natural size are comparable to the Farnesian Flora and other Greek works of the first rank. The other two, which are life-sized, are so similar to each other that they seem to be by one and the same hand. They can be differentiated only by the head and the hairstyle. And as all copies are harder and colder than their originals, though they may have been made by the best hands, and even made by the master himself based on his own work, as one Greek judge of art informs us, it is still not possible to say that one of these Vestals is a copy of the other, where the garment is concerned.\
The head of each of these figures is not covered by any veil, which does not deprive them of the right to be called Vestals, as it can be proved that priestesses of Vesta are to be found in other places without veils. Or rather it would appear, from the heavy folds of the garment on the back of the neck, that the veil, which is not a separate part of the garment, as can be seen on the largest of the Vestals, lies folded over at the back.\
The whole world deserves to be informed that these three divine works provided the first traces that led to the subsequent discovery of the subterranean treasures of Herculaneum.\
They came to light when memory of them was still forgotten, just as the town itself lay buried and submerged under its own ruins, at a time when the sad fate that struck the place was still known almost solely through the younger Pliny\'92s report of his uncle\'92s end, which came to him swiftly in the devastation of Herculaneum.\
These great masterpieces of Greek art had already been moved to a German location, where they were revered, as Naples was not yet lucky enough, as far as could be ascertained, to exhibit one single Herculanean monument.\
They were found in Portici near Naples in the year 1706 in a buried vault, as the foundations were being dug for a country house for the Prince d\'92Elbeuf, and immediately afterwards they came into the possession of Prince Eugen in Vienna, together with other statues in marble and metal that were discovered there.\
This great connoisseur of the arts, in order to have an excellent place where they could be displayed, had a sala terrena built primarily for these three figures, where a space was specially reserved for them alone. The whole academy and all the artists in Vienna were outraged as it were, as there had only been vague talk about the sale of the objects, and everyone followed their departure with saddened eyes, as they were taken away from Vienna to Dresden.\
The famous Matielli,\
whom Polycleitos provided with measurement, and Phidias with iron,\
(Algarotti)\
copied all three of the Vestals in clay before this happened, diligently but with great difficulty, to replace the loss of them in this way. A few years later he followed them and filled Dresden with eternal examples of his art. But here too his priestesses remained as an example of his study of drapery, which was his strength, until his old age. This provides a not unfounded preliminary judgment of his excellence.\
By the word drapery is to be understood everything that art teaches us about clothing naked figures and about folded garments. The knowledge of this is, after that of beauty in nature and of noble contour, the third merit of the works of antiquity.\
The drapery of the Vestals is in the highest style: the small folds come from a gentle sweep of the larger parts and lose themselves in these again with a fine sense of freedom and gentle harmony of the whole, without concealing the beautiful contour of the nude figure. How few modern masters are irreproachable in this aspect of art!\
One must be just to some great artists, especially painters of modern times however, and grant that they have, in certain cases, diverged from the path the Greek masters usually followed in clothing their figures, without disadvantage to nature and truth. Greek drapery was mostly made in imitation of thin and wet garments, and the result of this, as artists know, is that they cling close to the skin and the body, and allow the nudity of the latter to be perceived. The whole upper garment of Greek women was made of very thin material, and was for that reason called peplon, a veil.\
Fine examples of works such as the ancient paintings and especially the ancient busts show that the ancients did not always make finely folded garments. The beautiful Caracalla among the royal antiquities in Dresden can confirm this.\
In modern times it has become common to lay one garment on top of another, and sometimes to put on heavy garments, which cannot fall in such gentle and flowing folds as those of the ancients. As a result this gave rise to the modern style of large sections in the garments, through which the master can reveal his knowledge no less than in the usual style of the ancients.\
Carl Maratta and Franz Solimena can be considered the greatest artists of this kind. The new Venetian school, which tried to go further, exaggerated this style and by trying to include only such large sections made their garments stiff and firm.\
What generally characterizes the excellence of Greek masterpieces is finally a noble simplicity and a calm greatness, both in the pose and in the expression. Just as it always remains calm in the depths of the sea, however much it may rage on the surface, so the expression of Greek figures, whatever passions they may be subject to, reveal a great and placid soul.\
This soul is depicted in the face of Laocoon, and not only in the face, under the most intense suffering. The pain reveals itself in all the muscles and sinews of the body, and one believes, without considering the face and other parts, that one is almost suffering it oneself just by considering the painfully retracted abdomen. This pain is expressed, however, without any rage in the face and in the whole pose. He does not raise any terrible scream, as Virgil says in verse of his Laocoon. The opening of his mouth will not allow it. It is more an anxious and oppressed sighing, as described by Sadoleto.19 The pain of the body and the greatness of the soul are distributed throughout the whole body of the figure with equal strength and balanced equally. Laocoon suffers, but he suffers like Sophocles\'92s Philoctetes: his misery touches us to the very soul, but we wish that we, like that great man, could bear that misery.\
The expression of such a great soul far exceeds that which can be made through natural beauty. The artist should feel within himself the strength of spirit that he wanted to impress upon the marble. Greece had persons who were both artists and philosophers, and more than one Metrodor.20 Wisdom reached out its hand to art and instilled its figures with more than ordinary souls.\
Beneath a garment, which the artist should have provided to Laocoon as to a priest, his pain would not have been half so perceptible to us. Bernini claimed to have noticed the beginnings of the effect of the snake\'92s poison by the stiffening of one of Laocoon\'92s thighs.\
All the actions and poses of Greek figures that were not characterized by this quality of wisdom but were too passionate and wild succumbed to an error that the ancient artists called parenthyrsis.21\
Fig. 1. Laocoon and His Sons, also known as the Laocoon Group. Marble, first-century copy after a Hellenistic original from ca. 200 BC. Tlje Vatican Museums, Museo Pio-Clementino, Rome.\
Photo by Marie-Lan Nguyen, 2009, Wikimedia Commons.\
The more restful the position of the body is, the more suitable it is for depicting the true character of the soul. In all poses that diverge too much from a position of restfulness, the soul is not in a condition that is true to itself, but is in a violent and forced condition. The soul is more recognizable and characteristic of itself in a state of intense emotion, but it is great and noble in a state of unity, in a state of rest. In the case of Laocoon, if the pain alone were depicted it would be parenthyrsis. So the artist, in order to combine what was characteristic with nobility of soul, provided him with an action that was closest to a state of rest in such a condition of pain. But in such rest the soul must be indicated by characteristics that are peculiar to it and to no other soul, in order to make it be at rest but at the same time effective, calm but not indifferent or sleepy.\
The true opposite of this and completely at its other extreme is the most common taste of especially the modern would-be artist. Nothing\
earns their applause except the predominance of unusual poses and actions, accompanied by an impudent fiery quality, which they claim to have produced with some wit, or franchezza, as they say. Their favorite concept is contrapposto, which for them is the essence of what they imagine to be the qualities of a perfect work of art. They claim to find a soul in their figures, which moves like a comet out of its orbit; they would like to be able to see an Ajax and a Capaneus in every figure.\
The fine arts have their youthful period, as do human beings, and the beginnings of these arts seem to have been similar to those of artists, when only what is pretentious and amazing gives pleasure. Of such nature was the tragic muse of Aeschylus, and his Agamemnon became much darker through hyperbole than anything which Heraclitus had written. Perhaps the first Greek painters did not draw any differently than their first great tragedian had written.\
In all human endeavors what is intense and fleeting comes first; what is mature and fundamental is the last to come. But the latter needs time for it to be admired, and it is only characteristic of great masters. And intense passions are also an advantage for their students.\
The wise men of art know that what seems to be possible to imitate is very difficult:\
Ut sibi quivis\
Speret idem, sudet multum frustraque laboret\
Ausus idem.\
(Horace)22\
The great draftsman La Fage could not attain the taste of the ancients. Everything in his works is in motion and one\'92s observation of them is divided and distracted, as in a social event in which everybody wants to speak at once.\
The noble simplicity and calm greatness of the Greek statues are also what really distinguish Greek writings of the best periods. It was the writings of Socrates\'92s school and these qualities that brought about the supreme greatness of Raphael, which he attained through the imitation of the ancients.\
Such a beautiful soul as his, in such a beautiful body, was necessary to have a feeling for and discover the true character of the ancients in modern times, and it was his good fortune to do so at an age in which ordinary and half-formed souls are still without any sensitivity to true greatness.\
One must approach his works with an eye that has learned to have a sense for such beauty, with the real taste of antiquity. Then the peace and calm of the main figures in Raphael\'92s Attila, which appear lifeless to many, will be meaningful and sublime. The Roman bishop who averts the plan\
of the king of the Huns to attack Rome appears not with the gestures and movements of an orator but as a venerable man who just by his presence stops an uprising, like the man described to us by Virgil\
Turn pietate gravem ac meritis si forte virum quern\
Conspexere, silent arrectisque auribus adstant.23\
with a face full of divine confidence before the eyes of the brute. The two apostles do not hover like angels of death in the clouds but, if it is allowed to compare the holy with the unholy, like Homer\'92s Jupiter, who shakes Olympus by batting his eyelids.\
Algardi,24 in his famous representation of this very story in semi-relief on an altar of St. Peter\'92s Church in Rome, could not, or did not know how to, endow his figures of the two apostles with the effective calm of his great predecessor. In the work of the latter they look like the envoys of the Lord of Heavenly Hosts, but here they are like mortal warriors with human weapons.\
How few experts has Guido\'92s beautiful St. Michael in the Capuchin Church in Rome attracted who have been able to really understand the greatness of the expression the artist gave his archangel! Conca\'92s25 Michael is prized above Guido\'92s, because he shows indignation and vengeance in his face, while Guido\'92s Michael, after he has overthrown the enemy of God and Man, hovers over him without bitterness and with a cheerful and unmoved expression.\
The English poet also depicts the avenging angel, hovering over Britannia, as peaceful and calm, and compares him to the hero of a military campaign, the victor of Blenheim.26\
The royal picture gallery in Dresden now contains a worthy work by Raphael\'92s hand, and indeed from his best period, as Vasari and others testify. It is a Madonna with child, with St. Sixtus and St. Barbara kneeling on either side, together with two angels in the foreground.\
This picture was the main altar-piece in the monastery of St. Sixti in Piacenza. Lovers of art and experts in it went there, to see this Raphael, as one otherwise only went to Thespis, to look at the beautiful Cupid there by the hand of Praxiteles.\
Consider the Madonna with her face full of innocence and at the same time a more than womanly greatness, in a pose of blessed peace, and in that calmness that the ancients let prevail in the portraits of their gods. How great and noble is its contour!\
The child in her arms is a child who is more awe-inspiring than ordinary children, because of his face, from which a ray of light from the Godhead seems to shine forth through the childhood innocence.\
The woman saint below her kneels at her side, worshipping her in the silence of her soul, but far below the majesty of the main figure. The\
great master has compensated for her lowly position by the gentle charm of her face.\
The saint opposite this figure is a most venerable old man with features that seem to testify to a youth dedicated to God.\
The reverence of St. Barbara toward the Madonna, which is made more perceptible and more moving by the beautiful hands pressed against her breast, is lent expression in the other saint by the movement of one of his hands. This very action depicts for us the rapture of the saint, which the artist, to provide greater diversity, wisely wanted to attribute more to manly strength than to womanly demureness.\
It is true that Time has robbed this painting of much of its apparent radiance, and the strength of the colors is partly worn out. Only the soul with which the creator imbued the work made by his hands, still enlivens it.\
Everyone who approaches this and other works by Raphael in the hope of encountering the beautiful details which are so highly prized in the works of the Dutch painters, such as the laborious diligence of Netscher27 or of Dou,28 and the ivory flesh of Van der Werff,29 or the spruced-up style of some of Raphael\'92s fellow countrymen, will seek in vain for the greatness of Raphael in such a Raphael.\
After studying the beauty of nature, contours, drapery, and the noble simplicity and calm greatness in the works of the Greek masters, it would be necessary for artists to pay attention to investigating their mode of working, in order to be more successful in imitating them.\
It is known that they made their first models mostly in wax. Instead of this, modern masters have preferred clay or similar supple materials. They found them more suitable, especially for representing flesh, than wax, which seemed to them to be too sticky and tough for this purpose.\
Meanwhile this is not meant to imply that the art of sculpting in damp clay was unknown to the Greeks or was not common among them. The name of the man who made the first attempt at it is actually known. Butades of Sicyon is the first master of a figure in clay, and Arcasilaus, the friend of the great Lucullus, became famous more for his models in clay than for his actual works. He made a figure in clay that represented Bliss for Lucullus, and settled for a payment from the latter of 60,000 sesterces for it, and the knight Octavius gave this artist one talent for a mere model in gypsum for a large cup that he wanted to have made in gold.\
Clay would be the most suitable for making figures if it retained its moisture. But as it loses this, when it is dry and fired, the firmer parts of it come closer together and the figure loses mass and takes up less space. If the figure endured reduction evenly in every detail and part, then it would retain, although reduced, the same proportions. But the smaller parts of it become dry more quickly than the larger parts, and the body of the figure, as the heaviest part, last of all. And so the former loses more mass in the same period of time as the latter.\
Wax is not inconvenient in this way. None of it disappears, and the smoothness of flesh that it cannot acquire without great difficulty through the molding process can be given to it by another method.\
The model is made in clay, shaped in gypsum, and then cast in wax.\
The actual method used by the Greeks in working marble following their models, does not seem to have been that which is common among most of today\'92s artists. In the marble of the ancients the certainty and confidence of the master is everywhere revealed, and it is not easy, even in poor quality works by them, to demonstrate that somewhere they have carved off too much. The sure and accurate hand of the Greeks must necessarily have been guided by more certain and more reliable rules than those which are customary with us.\
The usual way adopted by our sculptors is, after they have studied their models thoroughly and shaped them as well as possible, to draw horizontal and perpendicular lines over them, which consequently cross over each other. Then they proceed in the same way one divides up a painting with a grid and then enlarges it, by transferring the same number of criss-crossing lines onto the stone.\
The square measurement of every small rectangle of the model is thus indicated on every large rectangle on the stone. However because the physical volume cannot be determined in this way, the result is that the correct measurement of neither the height nor the depth of the model can be very precisely described. Thus, though the artist can give his intended figure the proportions of the model to some extent, he will always be doubtful whether he has been working too deep or too shallow according to his design, and whether he has removed too much or too little volume, as he has to rely only on the evidence of his eyes.\
Using these lines, with which he can transfer the same outlines without any error or the least deviation onto his stone, he can therefore determine neither the outer girth nor the shape of the inner parts of the model, nor those parts toward the middle, only indicated by a faint trace.\
In addition to this is the fact that, with an extensive work that the sculptor cannot carry out alone, he needs the help of his assistants, who are not always sufficiently skilled to fulfill his intentions. If it happens that at some time something is wrongly carved because it is impossible to set limits to depths using this method, then the mistake cannot be made good.\
In general a comment must be made about the sculptor who carves out the deep parts as soon as he starts work on the stone, as deeply as he intends them to be, and does not attempt to do it gradually so that they only acquire the degree of hollowing required at the last stage. This kind of sculptor will never be able to rid his work of mistakes.\
There is also a major problem with this method, in that the lines transferred onto the stone are being carved away all the time, and\
must as often be drawn again and added to, not without some concern about deviation.\
The uncertainty of this method made it necessary for artists to find a more certain way, and the one invented by the French Academy in Rome and first used by them to make copies of ancient statues was adopted by many, also for working from models.\
What one does is fix a rectangle of suitable proportions, from which are hung lead-weighted threads in equally divided graduations, over a statue that one wants to copy. Through these threads the extreme points of the figure are indicated more clearly than would be possible using the first method of making lines on the surface, by which every point is the most extreme one. They also provide the artist with a more clearly perceptible measure of some of the most marked elevations and depressions by the degrees of distance from the parts covered by them. With the help of this method the artist can proceed more boldly.\
As the sweep of a curved line cannot be defined precisely by a single straight line however, the outlines of a figure can likewise only be indicated very uncertainly for the artist using this method, and, with the least deviation from the main surface, he will find himself at any moment without any guideline or aid.\
It is easily understandable that with this method it is also difficult to discover the true proportions of the figure. Attempts have been made to find them with horizontal lines that cut across the lead-weighted threads. However, the rays of light from the rectangles, which make the lines projecting from the figures, strike the eye at a much greater angle and thus appear larger, according to whether they are higher or lower than our viewpoint.\
For copying works of antiquity, which one cannot handle as one would like, the lead-weighted threads are still worth using, and it has not been possible to make this method of working easier and more certain. But for working from a model this way is not certain enough, as has been indicated.\
Michelangelo used a method unknown before him, and it is surprising, as sculptors revere him as their great master, that none of them has become his successor.\
This modern Phidias and the greatest since the Greeks followed, as one might suspect, in the footsteps of his great teachers. At least the world knows of no other method of transferring all perceptible parts and beautiful aspects of the model onto the figure itself and lending them expression.\
Vasari described this invention somewhat incompletely. The sense of his report is as follows.\
Michelangelo took a vessel full of water, into which he laid his model of wax or of some hard material. He raised it gradually to the surface of\
the water. Thus the prominent parts were revealed first and the deeper ones remained covered, until finally the whole model was exposed and lying out of the water. In this very way, Vasari says, Michelangelo worked on his marble. He revealed first of all the prominent parts and little by little the deeper ones.\
It seems that either Vasari did not have a very clear grasp of his friend\'92s method, or carelessness in his account makes it necessary to imagine it somewhat differently than his report of it.\
The shape of the water vessel is not described clearly enough. The gradual raising of the model out of the water would be very laborious and presupposes much more than the art historian cared to tell us.\
It is a persuasive argument that Michelangelo would have studied this method invented by him as thoroughly as possible and made himself familiar with it. In all probability he proceeded as follows.\
The artist took a vessel that had the same volume as his figure, which we will assume to be long and rectangular. He inscribed the outside surface of the sides of this rectangular container with specific divisions, which he transferred to his stone according to an increased scale, and he also inscribed the interior sides of it with specific graduations from top to bottom. Into the container he laid his model made of heavy material or fixed it on the bottom, if it was made of wax. He covered the container with a grid with the same divisions as the lines he marked on his stone, and presumably on his figure immediately afterwards. Onto the model he poured water, until it reached the extreme points of the prominent parts, and after he had noted the part that had to be raised on his drawn figure, he let a certain amount of water drain away, to allow the raised part of the model to project a little more, and then he began to work on this part according to the amount of graduation that had been uncovered. If another part of his model had become visible at the same time, then it was also worked on, as far as it was uncovered. And so he proceeded with all the raised parts.\
More water was let out until also the depressions were revealed. The graduations on the container indicated to him all the time the height of the fallen water, and the surface of the water indicated the furthest baseline of the depressions. The same number of graduations on the stone therefore provided his correct measurement.\
The water indicated to him not only the heights and depths but also the contour of his model, and the space from the interior side of the container to the outer edge of the water, the size of which was provided by the graduations on the other two sides, was a precise measurement of how much he could remove from his stone.\
Now his work had acquired its first but correct form. The surface of the water had indicated a line for him, of which the extreme points of the raised areas were parts. As the water in the vessel fell this line also moved\
away in a horizontal direction, and the artist followed this movement with his iron tool, as far as the point where the water revealed the lowest incline of the raised parts and became one with the surface. So with every reduced graduation in the container with his model he progressed by an equivalent larger graduation on his figure, and in this way the line of the water had led him to the most extreme contour of his work, so that the model now lay there uncovered by the water.\
His figure now required beautiful form. He poured water over his model again to a height which was useful for him, and then counted the graduations on the container up to the line indicated by the water, whereby the height of the raised part became evident. On this very raised part he placed his straight edge in a perfectly horizontal position, and from the lowest line of this he made a measurement to the bottom of the depression. If he discovered the same number of reduced and larger graduations, then this provided a form of geometric calculation of the content, and it proved to him that he had adopted the right procedure.\
While repeating this work he attempted to imbue his model, and his figure, with the pressure and movement of the muscles and sinews, the curve of the other small parts, and the finest aspects of art. The water, which also lay on the parts which were least perceptible, traced the curve of them very closely, and indicated to him the contour with a perfect line.\
This method does not prevent the model from being put in all possible positions. If it is placed in profile it will reveal to the artist everything that he has overlooked. It will show him the outer contour of his raised and his inner parts and a complete cross-section.\
All this, and the hope that the work will be a good success, presupposes a model that has been shaped by artistic hands according to the true taste of antiquity.\
It is by this route that Michelangelo achieved immortality. His fame and the rewards he received granted him the leisure to work with such care.\
An artist of our times who has been endowed with gifts both by nature and his own diligence, which have enabled him to rise higher, and who has found the truth and correctness of this method, finds himself obliged to work more for his daily bread than for honor. And so he keeps to his usual routine, in which he believes that he reveals superior skill, and he continues to take his way of looking at things, acquired through lengthy practice, as his rule.\
This way of looking at things, which is primarily what guides him, has become quite decisive through practical means that are in part very dubious. How finely and with what certainty he could have done things, if he had developed his way of looking at things according to reliable rules from the time of his youth.\
If prospective artists, when they receive their first introduction to working in clay or other materials, were instructed according to this certain method of Michelangelo\'92s, which he discovered after long research, then they could have some hope of coming close, as he did, to the Greeks.\
Everything that can be said in praise of Greek works in the art of sculpture should also in all probability be true of the paintings of the Greeks. However, time and human fury have robbed us of the means of providing an incontrovertible assessment of it.\
Greek painters are granted the ability to draw and lend expression, but that is all: they are denied any sense of perspective, composition, and coloring. This judgment is based partly on semi-relief works and partly on the paintings by the ancients (it cannot be said that they are by Greeks) discovered in and near Rome, in the subterranean vaults of the palaces of Maecenas, Titus, and Trajan and the Antonines, and of which not many more than thirty have been preserved till the present, and some of which are only in the form of mosaics.\
Turnbull30 included in his work on ancient painting a collection of the most famous works, drawn by Camillo Paderni31 and engraved by Mynde,32 which are all that lends the splendid and misused paper of his book any value. Among them are two of which the originals are to be found in the cabinet of the famous doctor Richard Mead33 in London.\
It has already been commented on by others that Poussin made studies of the so-called Aldobrandini wedding; that there are still drawings extant that Annibale Caracci made of what is assumed to be Marcus Coriolanus; and that it has been claimed that there is great similarity between the heads in the works of Guido Reni and the heads in the famous mosaic work the Seduction ofEuropa.\
If such fresco paintings can provide a well-founded assessment of the paintings of the ancients, then based on relics of this kind one would wish to dispute the ability in drawing and expression of the artists among them.\
Those paintings with life-sized figures that have been moved from the walls of the Herculanean theater together with its wall give us, we are assured, a poor conception of them. Theseus as vanquisher of the mino-taur, with young Athenians kissing his hands and embracing his legs, Flora together with Hercules and a faun, and what is said to be the judgment of the decemvir Appius Claudius, are all, according to the eye-witness report of an artist, drawn in a partly mediocre and partly imperfect manner. We are assured that not only do most of the heads not have any expression, but, as in the case of Appius Claudius, there are no good character traits.\
But this very fact proves that they are paintings by the hand of a very mediocre master, because the knowledge of beautiful proportions, outlines of the body, and expression among the Greek sculptors must also have been characteristic of their good painters too.\
Modern artists owe the ancient ones a lot for those aspects of art that have been attributed to them.\
Distinction must indisputably be awarded to them, however, for perspective. With all the learned defense of the ancients concerning this field of knowledge, the distinction remains with modern artists. The laws of composition and arrangement, however excellent Aetion34 may have been in that field, were only partially and incompletely known to the ancients, as the superior works from the periods when Greek art flourished in Rome demonstrate.\
Concerning coloring, the reports in the writings of the ancients and the relics of ancient painting also decide one in favor of modern artists.\
In more recent times different kinds of representation have likewise attained a higher level of perfection. To all appearances our painters have excelled ancient painters in animal paintings and landscapes. The more beautiful kinds of animals in other climes seem not to have been known to them, if one may draw one\'92s conclusions from some individual cases, such as Marcus Aurelius\'92s horse, the two horses on Monte Cavallo, and indeed from the so-called horses of Lysippos above the portal of the St. Marks\'92 Church in Venice, and from the Farnesian oxen and the other animals in this group.\
It should be mentioned here in passing that in their horses the ancients did not take account of the diametrically opposed movement of the legs, as can be seen in the horses in Venice and on old coins. Some modern artists have followed them out of ignorance, and even been defended by some.\
Our modern landscapes, especially those of the Dutch painters, owe their beauty primarily to being painted in oil. Through this medium their colors have acquired more force, a more joyful quality and more grandeur, and nature itself, under heavier and damper skies, has contributed not a little to extending the range of this kind of art.\
More light needs to be thrown on the advantages mentioned, as well as others, of the modern artists over the ancients, by providing more thorough proof than hitherto.\
One great step still needs to be taken to extend the range of art. The artist who starts to diverge from the usual path, or has actually diverged from it, dares to take this step, but his foot is standing on the most precipitous spot in his art, and he finds himself helpless.\
The history of saints, fables, and metamorphoses have been the permanent and almost sole themes used by modern painters for several centuries. They have been used and artificially contrived in thousands of different ways, so that finally those knowledgeable about art and the experts must be overcome by a sense of surfeit and revulsion.\
The soul of an artist who has learned to think about such things is left with a sense of pointlessness and nothing to occupy him with the themes\
of Daphne and Apollo, or of the seduction of Proserpina or Europa or suchlike. He tries to show that he is a poet and to paint his figures as images, that is as allegories.\
Painting is also concerned with things that are not perceptible through the senses. These are its highest goal, and the Greeks endeavored to achieve this, as the writings of the ancients confirm. Aristides, a painter who was able to depict the soul, is said to have been able to express the character of a whole people. He painted the Athenians as kind but also time cruel, reckless and also stubborn, and brave as well as cowardly. If the representation of such things is possible, then it is only by way of allegory, through images that signify general concepts.\
The artist finds himself here as though in a wasteland. The languages of the wild American Indians, which have a great lack of such concepts and contain no word that could be used to designate recognizability, space, duration, and so on, are no more lacking in such symbols than is the painting of our times. The painter who thinks beyond the scope of his palette wants to have a stock of erudition that he can explore and from which he can take meaningful and perceptible signs for things that are not perceptible. A complete work of this kind is not yet available; previous attempts are not sufficiently substantial and are inadequate for such grand intentions. The artist well knows how far Ripa\'92s leonology and the Hieroglyphics of Ancient Peoples by van Hooghe will satisfy him.35\
This is the reason why the greatest painters have chosen only familiar themes. Annibale Carracci, instead of depicting the most famous deeds and events of the House of Farnese in the Farnesian Gallery as an allegorical poet could present through symbols and perceptible images, has revealed his whole strength only in well-known fables.\
The Royal Picture Gallery in Dresden contains without doubt a treasure trove of works by the greatest masters that probably surpasses that of all other galleries in the world, and His Majesty, being the wisest of experts in the fine arts, sought out, after a strict process of selection, only the most perfect objects of their kind. But how few historical works of an allegorical nature are to be found among these royal treasures, and even fewer poetic paintings.\
The great Rubens is the most eminent among our great painters, to have dared, as a sublime poet, to follow this untrodden path in painting in his great works. The Luxemburg Gallery, his greatest work, has become known to the whole world through the hand of the most skillful engraver.\
After him it is not easy to name a more sublime work of this kind that has been undertaken and completed in modern times than the cupola of the Imperial Library in Vienna, which was painted by Daniel Gran36 and engraved on copper by Sedelmayer. The Apotheosis of Hercules in Versailles painted by Lemoyne37 as an allusion to Cardinal Hercule de Fleury, which France flaunts as the greatest composition in the world, is a\
very common and limited allegory compared with the learned and meaningful painting by the German painter. It is a poem of praise, in which the most effective thoughts refer to names in the calendar.38 Here was a location where something great could have been done, and it is surprising that it did not happen. But if had been the intention that an apotheosis of a minister should decorate the most elegant ceiling in the royal castle, then one would have immediately noticed what the painter\'92s shortcomings were.\
Artists need a work that contains those perceptible figures and images from the whole of mythology, from the best poets of ancient and modern times, from the philosophy of many peoples, from memorials of antiquity on stones, coins, and implements by which general concepts can be expressed poetically. This rich subject matter should be sorted into certain convenient classes and arranged to provide instruction for the artist through its use and significance in possible individual cases.\
In this way a wide field would be opened at the same time, to enable imitation of the ancients and to lend to our works the sublime taste of antiquity.\
Since the time when Vitruvius delivered bitter complaints about the spoiling of good taste, it has been spoiled even more in the decorations of modern times, partly through the vogue for the grotesque introduced by Morto,39 a painter born in Feltre, and partly through the insignificant paintings used to decorate our rooms. It could be purified through a more thorough study of allegory and thus acquire truth and sense.\
Our flourishes and the favorite shell decorations, without which nothing can be considered a true ornament, are sometimes no more natural than Vitruvius\'92s painted candelabra, which used to adorn castles and palaces. A study of allegory could provide convenient knowledge to enable the making of ornaments suitable for their situation.\
Reddere personae scit convenientia cuique\
(Horace)40\
Paintings on ceilings and over doors are mainly there to fill the space and to cover those places that simply cannot be filled just with gilding. They not only have no relationship to the status and circumstances of the owner, but are often even detrimental to his interests.\
It is thus abhorrence of empty space that fills the walls, and paintings that are empty of thoughts are to fill this emptiness.\
This is the reason why the artist, left to his own arbitrary decisions, often chooses, from a lack of allegorical images, themes that serve more to satirize than to honor the person to whom he is dedicating the work. And perhaps, in order to be sure in advance, great care is taken to require of the painter that he should make images that have no significance.\
It is often difficult to find such things, and finally\
. . . velut aegri somnia, vanae Fingentur species.\
(Horace)41\
In this way one removes from painting that which constitutes its greatest success, namely the representation of invisible, past, and future things.\
But those paintings that could be meaningful in this or that place lose their effect by their being allocated an unimportant or unsuitable place.\
The person who orders a new house to be built\
Dives agris, dives positis in foenere nummis.\
(Horace)42\
will perhaps have small pictures placed over the high doors of his rooms and halls that conflict with one\'92s viewpoint and with the rules of perspective. This refers to such works that are parts of the firm and immovable ornamentation, and not those which have been arranged according to symmetry in a collection.\
The choice of decorations in architecture is at times not more thorough than this: fittings and trophies in a hunting lodge are always placed as awkwardly as Ganymede and the eagle, and Jupiter and Leda in the relief work in the metal doors at the entrance to St. Peter\'92s Church in Rome.\
All the arts have a double goal: they should give pleasure and at the same time instruct, and many of the greatest landscape painters have therefore believed that they would be going only halfway to fulfilling their art if they left their landscapes without any figures.\
The brush the painter employs should be dipped in reason, as someone said of Aristotle\'92s writing implement. It should leave behind more to think about than just what it reveals to the eye, and this skill the painter can acquire if he has learned not to conceal but to clothe his thoughts in allegories. If he has a theme that he has chosen himself or that has been given to him, and that has been conceived in a poetic way or is to be made so, then his art will inspire him and awaken the fire in him that Prometheus stole from the gods. The expert will have something to think about, and the mere enthusiast will learn from it.\
Open Letter on Thoughts on the Imitation of Greek Works in Painting and the Art of Sculpture (1755-56)\
My friend!\
You have written about Greek arts and artists, and I would have liked you to have proceeded in your work as the Greek artists did with theirs. They exposed them to the eyes of the whole world, and especially to those of experts, before they released them from their own hands, and the whole of Greece passed judgment on their works at the great games, especially at the Olympic Games. You know that Aetion took his painting of Alexander\'92s marriage to Roxane there. You would have needed someone greater than Proxenides,1 who passed judgment on the artist there. If you had not been so secretive about your work, then I would have liked to pass on information about it before it was printed to several experts and scholars with whom I have developed an acquaintanceship here.\
One of them has seen Italy twice and looked at every one of the paintings of the greatest masters for several whole months in the very places where they were produced. You know that only in this way can one become an expert. A man who can tell you which of Guido Reni\'92s altar pieces have been painted on taffeta or on canvas, and what kind of wood Raphael used for his Transfiguration, and so on, well, I think his judgment would have been decisive!\
Another of my acquaintances has studied antiquity and knows it by its reputation:\
Callet & artificem solo deprendere odore.\
(Quintus Sectanus, Satyme 14)2\
He knows how many knobs there were on Hercules\'92s club, how much Nestor\'92s cup holds according to modern measurement, and in fact it is said that he will eventually be in a position to answer all the questions that the Emperor Tiberius posed to the grammarians.\
Another acquaintance has done nothing but look at coins for many years.3 He has made many new discoveries, especially for inclusion in a history of the old masters of coin-making, and it is said that he will gain the attention of the world through his account of one of the precursors of the coin-makers of the city of Cyzicum.\
With what certainty you would have proceeded, if your work had been brought before the judgment seat of such scholars. These gentlemen have revealed to me their reflections on it, and I feel sorry about the effect on your good name, should they be published.\
Among other objections he makes, the first acquaintance is surprised that you have not described the two angels on the Raphael in the Royal Gallery in Dresden. He was told that on seeing this work in Saint Sixtus church in Piacenza, a painter from Bologna4 exclaimed full of wonderment in a letter: \'93Oh, what an angel from Paradise!\'94 By this he was referring to the two angels, and he maintains that they are the most beautiful figures in the works of Raphael.\
He would also reproach you with the fact that the Raphael is described in the same way as Raguenet5 describes a Saint Sebastian by Beccafiimi6 and a Hercules with Antaeus by Lanfranco,7 etc.\
The second acquaintance believes that Laocoon\'92s beard should have deserved just as much attention in your work as his retracted body. An expert on the works of the Greeks, he says, must be able to view Laocoon\'92s beard with the same eyes with which Father Rabat viewed the beard of Michelangelo\'92s Moses.\
This experienced Dominican,\
Qui mores hominum multorum vidit & urbes,8\
has proved after so many centuries from the evidence of this beard how Moses wore his beard, and how Jews had to wear them, if they wanted to be considered Jews.\
In this man\'92s opinion you have written without any learned knowledge of the peplos of the Vestal Virgins. He could have revealed as much to you about the curve of the veil over the brow of the largest of the Vestal Virgins, as Cuper9 has said about the tip of the veil on the famous Deification of Homer.\
There is also no proof available that the Vestal Virgins are really by the hand of a Greek master. Reason very often does not lead us to things that should occur to us naturally. If it is proved to you that the marble of these figures was not Parian marble, then it cannot fail to be the case that the Vestal Virgins together with your work will lose a great deal of their value. You only had to say that the marble had large grains. This would have been proof enough of it being a Greek work. Who would be able to demonstrate to you so easily how large the grains should be, to distinguish a piece of Greek marble from Carrara marble, which the ancient Romans used? And what is more, some do not even consider them to be Vestal Virgins.\
The coin expert told me about the heads of Livia and Agrippina, which do not have the profile you referred to. It is his opinion that in\
this context you would have had an excellent opportunity to talk about what the ancients called a square nose, which should have been among your concepts of beauty. Meanwhile, you must be aware of the fact that the noses on some of the most famous Greek statues, such as the Medici Venus, and the Picchini10 Meleager look too thick to serve our artists as a model of natural beauty.\
I don\'92t want to hurt you with the many doubts and objections that have been brought against your work and that have been repeated to a disgusting degree, as an academic scholar who has striven to acquire the character of Homer\'92s Margites11 has done this. He was shown the work, and he looked at it and put it aside. The first glance therefore was objectionable to him, and one could tell by looking at him that he wanted to be asked to give his judgment on it, which we all did. He began by saying that it seemed to be a work to which the author did not want to devote excessive hard work. He could not find more than four or five allegations and those were partly presented in a careless fashion, without indicating page or chapter. He also said that it could not fail to be the case that he had taken his reports from books, which he was ashamed to cite.\
Finally I must tell you that someone claims to have found something in your work that has remained hidden in it for me up till now, namely that the Greeks are cited as the inventors of painting and the art of sculpture. This is completely false, as can be easily explained. He has heard that it was the Egyptians, or an even older people that he did not know about.\
Something useful can also be found in the most insignificant ideas. Meanwhile it is clear that you only wanted to talk about the good taste evident in these arts, and the first invention of a form of art mostly bears a relation to taste in it, which is similar to that of a seed to its fruit. Art in its cradle among the Egyptians in their later period can be compared in later times to art in a stage of beauty among the Greeks by considering individual works. You only have to look at the Ptolemy Philopator carved in stone by the hand of Aulus, and consider next to this head a few figures by an Egyptian master, to perceive the low merit of the latter nation in these arts.\
Middleton12 and others have assessed the form and taste of their paintings. The paintings of two life-size people on two mummies in the Royal Treasury of Antiquities in Dresden provide clear proof of the awful painting of the Egyptians. Both these bodies are meanwhile remarkable in more than one respect, and I shall add a short report on them to this text.13\
I cannot deny, my friend, that I must partly admit the rightness of these objections. The lack of cited texts is sufficient to have led to some bias in your judgment: the art of making black eyes out of blue ones should have deserved at least one allegation. You proceed almost like Democritus, who was asked \'93What is Man?\'94 He replied \'93Something that we all know.\'94 What reasonable man can read all of the Greek scholars?\
Ibit eo, quo vis, qui zonam perdidit. . .\
(Horace)14\
These objections have caused me meanwhile to go through the work looking at it in a different way. On the whole one is too much inclined to tip the scales through the weight of friendship or its opposite. I would consider myself to be the former case. In order to remove this prejudice, I shall try to pursue my objections as far as it is possible for me to do so.\
I will allow the first and second pages to pass, although I could say a few words on the comparison of Virgil\'92s Diana with Homer\'92s Nausicaa, and the way you make use of it. I also believe that the report on the second page on the maltreated works by Correggio, which is presumably taken from the letters of Count Tessin,15 could have been clarified by an account of how the works of the best masters were used at that time in Stockholm.\
It is known that in the conquest of Prague on July 15, 1648, by Count Konigsmark, the best works among the Emperor Rudolph II\'92s valuable collection of paintings were removed and taken to Sweden. Among them were several works by Correggio, which he had produced for Duke Federico of Mantua, and which the latter had sent as a gift to the emperor. The famous Leda and a Cupid working on his bow were the most distinguished of the works mentioned.\
Queen Christina, who at that time had more book learning than taste, handled these treasures in the same way as the Emperor Claudius did an Alexander made by the hand of Apelles:16 he had the head cut off the figure and the head of Augustus put in its place. In Sweden they are said to have cut out the heads, hands, and feet and stuck them onto a wallhanging, and then the rest was painted in. Those works that were lucky enough to escape mutilation, especially the works of Correggio, together with the paintings the queen had bought in Rome, came into the possession of the Duke of Orleans, who acquired 250 works for 90,000 scudi. Among them were eleven paintings by the hand of Correggio.\
I am also not content however with the fact that you accuse only the northern countries of becoming familiar very late with good taste, because of their low regard for beautiful paintings. If this is to be taken as evidence of taste, then I do not know how we are to judge our neighbors. As Bonn, the residence of the Elector of Cologne, was conquered by the French during the so-called Fiirstenberg affair after the death of Maximilian Heinrich,17 the great paintings were cut out of their frames without distinguishing between them and stretched over the frames of the wagons on which the equipment and valuables were taken off to France. Please do not think that I shall continue to cite merely historical objections, as I started off with. But before I present you with my doubts, I cannot avoid reproaching you on two general points.\
First of all you have written in a style in which clarity seems to have suffered at the expense of brevity. Were you concerned that you will be condemned in future to the punishment of that Spartan who uttered more than three words: to read Guicciardini\'92s War with Pisa)18 If the purpose is to provide general instruction, then it must be intelligible to everyone. Food should be prepared more to suit the guests\'92 taste than that of the cooks.\
Coenae fercula nostrae\
Malim conuiuis, quam placuisse coquis.19\
After that you reveal yourself almost in every line as having far too great a passion for antiquity. I hope you will concede the truth of this to some extent if I make an objection in the course of my comments, when something appears offensive to me in this respect.\
The first specific objection that I would make to you concerns something on the third page. Please always bear in mind that I am treating you leniently, and I have left the first two pages unchallenged:\
non temere a me\
Quiuis ferret idem.\
(Horace)20\
Now I shall begin to proceed with you in the usual way when assessing a work.\
The author talks of certain forms of negligence in the works of the Greek artists, which one should observe as Lucian is said to have observed the Jupiter by Phidias in Pisa, \'93Jupiter himself, not his footstool.\'94 And he could not be accused perhaps of anything concerning the footstool, but could be accused of a grave error concerning the statue itself.\
Is it of no importance that Phidias made his sitting Zeus so big that it almost touches the ceiling of the temple, and that this makes us fearful that the god will cast off the whole roof if at some time he considers standing up? It would have been wiser to have left this temple without a roof, like the Temple of Olympian Jupiter in Rome.\
It is not unreasonable to demand an explanation from the author of what he understands by the concept of negligence. It seems as though the errors of the ancients are to be allowed to pass muster under this name, and there is a tendency to present them to us as beautiful aspects, as the Greek poet Alcaeus presented the mole on the finger of his favorite boy. The imperfections of the ancients are often perceived in the same way as a father\'92s eye regards the shortcoming of his children.\
Strabonem\
Appellat Paetum pater, & Pullum, male parvus\
Si cui filius est.\
(Horace)21\
If they were those forms of negligence that the ancients called \'93par-erga,\'94 and which it is to be wished that Proto genes had committed in his Ictlysus, in which the painter\'92s great diligence draws our attention first to a partridge to the detriment of the main figure, then they would be like certain forms of negligence in women, which make them attractive. It would have been much safer not even to have referred to the Diomedes by Dioscorides.22 But the author, who seems to know this work made of stone only too well, wanted from the very start to protest against all the objections to the errors of ancient artists. He was able to believe that if he was shown errors in one of the most famous and beautiful works of the Greeks, such as the Diomedes, then this could cause at least some prejudice against the lesser works of the artists of this nation. Thus he attempted to deal with the matter as easily as possible and thought he could cover all errors by the use of the mild expression negligence.\
So how would it be if I demonstrated that Dioscorides had understood neither perspective nor the most common laws governing the movement of the human body, and indeed had even acted counter to what is possible? I shall dare to do so. But\
incedo per ignes\
Suppositos cineri doloso\
(Horace)23\
And I would probably not be the first to discover errors in this work of stone, but I am completely unaware of anyone else having reported them in writing.\
Dioscorides\'92s Diomedes is a figure that is either sitting or is about to rise up from the seat, for the movement is ambiguous. It is obvious that he is not actually sitting, but he cannot be lifting himself up; this cannot be achieved through the movement he is making.\
The effort our body employs to rise up from a seat follows the laws of mechanics and is directed toward the center of gravity, which the body seeks. As the body raises itself, it attempts to maintain this center as it draws after it the legs, which had been stretched out in front while sitting. But on the work of stone that we are considering the right leg is stretched out. The effort of getting up begins with raised heels, and at that moment the weight rests only on the toes, which Felix24 observed in his carved Diomedes. In this case, however, the complete sole of the foot is resting.\
In a sitting position, such as Diomedes is in, with the left leg folded beneath, the body cannot find its center of gravity merely by drawing back the legs, if it tries to raise itself up. Consequently it cannot possibly raise itself up by this movement on its own. In his left hand, which is resting on the crossed leg, Diomedes is holding the stolen palladium, and in his right hand a short sword, the point of which lies casually on the pedestal. The\
body of Diomedes displays therefore neither the first natural movement of the feet, which isnecessary to every natural raising of a sitting person, nor the force of the supporting arms, which are required to raise it from an unusual sitting position. Consequently Diomedes cannot be getting up.\
At the same time, when one observes the figure performing this action, it can be seen that an error in perspective has been committed.\
The foot of his crossed leg touches the cornice of the pedestal, which juts out over the base on which both it and the front stretched-out foot is resting. Consequently the line that the rear foot would describe is in fact in the front position on the stone, while the line that the front foot would describe is in fact at the back.\
Even if this position were possible, it is contrary to the character of most works by Greek artists, who always sought what was natural and unaffected, which no one has been able to discover in the forceful twisting of the Diomedes figure.\
Everyone who endeavors to realize this position in sitting will find it almost impossible. But even if it could finally be maintained through effort, without having moved oneself into the position from a previous sitting position, it would offend against all probability. For what person would do such extreme violence to himself on purpose in such an awkward position?\
It is true that Felix, who presumably lived after Dioscorides, had his Diomedes performing the same action that his predecessor gave him, but he attempted, if not to improve on the forced manner of it, at least to present it in a more bearable form, by placing opposite Diomedes the figure of Ulysses, who, it is said, wanted to take the honor of robbing the palladium away from Diomedes and attempted to snatch it away from him in a deceitful manner. Diomedes is therefore preparing to defend himself, and by the fierceness that the hero displays, his position becomes a more likely one.\
Equally, Diomedes can not have been a sitting figure, as can be seen by the free and unforced contour of the buttocks and the thigh. And the foot of the farther crossed-over leg would not be visible, not to mention the fact that this leg would have to be in a more upturned position.\
The Diomedes in Mariette\'92s25 work is completely impossible, for the left leg has been crossed over like a folded-up pocket knife, and the foot, which is not visible, is raised up so high that that there is nowhere for it to rest on.\
Can such errors be excused my calling them acts of negligence, and would one pass over them with such leniency in the works of more recent masters?\
In this, his most famous work, Dioscorides has in fact shown himself to be only a copier of Polykleitos.26 It is believed that the latter is the same Polykleitos, whose Doryphorus provided Greek artists with the highest rule governing human proportions. It is therefore assumed\
that his Diomedes was the original model for Dioscorides, and the latter avoided an error which the former had committed. The pedestal, over which Polykleitos\'92s Diomedes hovers, has been made against all the most highly recognized rules of perspective. The lower and the upper cornices of it form two quite separate lines, whereas they should run out from the same point.\
I am surprised that Perrault27 has not also drawn examples from carved stones to prove the assertion that modern artists are superior in merit to the ancients. I believe it will not be detrimental to the author and his work if, as well as presenting my own objections, I also trace the sources from which he took particular passages and reports.\
Pausanias talks of the food prescribed for the young wrestlers among the Greeks during the oldest period. Why is there even a mention of food made with milk at this place in the text, which I myself have looked at, since the Greek text talks of soft cheese? Dromeus of Stymphalos introduced the eating of meat instead of it, as is mentioned in that context.\
I had no success with my investigation of that great secret of the Greeks: making black eyes out of blue ones. I can find only one place where it is mentioned, in the works of Dioscorides,28 who speaks of this art only casually and in passing. This would have provided an occasion for the author to have made his work more worthy of note than by his treatment of a new way of working with marble. Newton and Algarotti would have provided more questions for the wise to solve and more stimulation to the fair sex.29 This art was regarded more highly by beautiful German women than by Greek ones, among whom large and beautiful blue eyes seem to have been rarer than black ones.\
At one time green eyes were fashionable.\
Et si bel oeil vert & riant & clair (Le Sire de Coucy Chanson)30\
I don\'92t know whether art made some contribution to their color.\
Some words from Hippocrates could be cited on pockmarks, if one was inclined to become involved in the exposition of words.\
Moreover, I am of the opinion that the distortion of the face caused by smallpox does not cause so large an imperfection of the body as that said to have been observed on Athenians. While their faces may have been well-formed, the rear parts of their bodies were in very poor condition. Nature\'92s economy in developing these parts can be compared to her excess among the Enotocoetae in India, who are said to have had such large ears that they used them instead of cushions.\
Generally I believe that our artists could perhaps have just as good an opportunity to study the most beautiful naked bodies as was possible in the gymnasia of the ancients. Why do they not take advantage of the\
opportunity like that, which has been suggested to the artists of Paris, namely that they should walk along the banks of the Seine around the time when people go bathing, where they have the choice of seeing naked bodies from the age of six to fifty? It was after such observations that Michelangelo is said to have sketched, in his famous cartoon of the war with Pisa, the figures of soldiers bathing in a river, who jump out of the water at the sound of a trumpet, run to their clothes, and throw them on.\
One of the most objectionable parts of the work is undoubtedly that at the end of the tenth page, where modern sculptors are placed much too far below Greek ones. Modern times have more to show us in the way of strength and manliness than a Glycon31 could, and more in the way of sensitivity, youthfulness, and femininity than a Praxiteles.32\
Michelangelo, Algardi, and Schliiter,33 whose masterpieces adorn the city of Berlin, have produced muscular bodies and\
. . . invicti membra Glyconis34\
as awe-inspiring and masculine as Glycon himself. And as far as sensitivity is concerned one can almost assert that Bernini, Fiammingo,35 Le Gros,36 Rauchmiiller,37 and Donner38 have even excelled the Greeks.\
Our artists agree that the ancient sculptors did not understand how to make beautiful clothes, and I believe that for the purposes of imitation they would rather choose a Cupid by Fiammingo than one by Praxiteles. The famous story about the Cupid made by Michelangelo, which he placed next to a Cupid by an ancient master to teach the people of our times how excellent the art of the ancients was, proves nothing in this case. For children made by Michelangelo can never bring us so close as Nature itself does.\
I believe that it is no exaggeration to say assert that Fiammingo formed creatures like a new Prometheus, the like of which had been seen only rarely in art before him. If it is possible to draw conclusions in general about art from most of the figures of children on carved stones and on works in relief made by the ancients, then one would wish that their children displayed more childlike qualities and less fully grown forms, more baby flesh and fewer signs of bones. Raphael\'92s children are made in such a way as are those of the first great painters up to the time when Franz Quenoy,39 known as Fiammingo, appeared, whose children, because he lent them more innocence and naturalness, became for the painters after him models, in the same way as Apollo and Antinous were for youthfulness. Algardi, who lived at the same time, can be placed alongside Fiammingo with respect to his figures of children. Their models in terracotta are more highly regarded by our artists than the children in marble made by the ancients. And an artist whom I should not be ashamed to cite by name has assured me that in the seven years during\
which he studied in the Academy of Artists in Vienna he knew of no one who had drawn from any Cupid from antiquity there.\
Also I do not know what sort of concept of beautiful form it was among the Greeks that required the hair to be hanging down and covering the brow of children and young people. A Cupid by Praxiteles and a Patroclus in a painting by Philostratus were represented in this way. And Antinous never appears in any other way in statues and busts, nor on carved stones or coins. Perhaps such a brow lends the favorite of Hadrian the gloomy and rather melancholy expression that is noticeable on heads of him.\
Does not an open and free brow lend a face a nobler and more sublime quality? And does not Bernini seem to have understood formal beauty better than the ancients, because while he was working on a marble bust of the then young king in France, Louis XIV, he moved the locks of hair, which this prince had previously worn hanging down to his eyebrows, back from his brow. \'93Your Majesty,\'94 said the artist, \'93is the king and can show your brow to the whole world.\'94 From that time on the king and his entire court wore their hair in the manner of which Bernini had approved.\
This same artist\'92s judgment on the relief work on the monument to Pope Alexander VI can provide us with the opportunity of making a comment on such work among the ancients. \'93The art of relief work,\'94 he said, \'93consists in making that which is not in relief seem to be in relief.\'94 And he used to say \'93The figures that are almost entirely in relief on the monument in question seemed to be what they were, and did not seem to be what they were not.\'94\
Relief works were applied by those who first invented them in places where it was desired to provide decoration in the form of historical or allegorical images, but where neither space nor a suitable situation could be found for a group of free-standing statues, nor for a cornice. A cornice serves not only as a decorative covering but also much more to preserve and protect that part of a work and of a building where it is standing. Fixing it in place must always be done with consideration for the use it will serve, that is, to keep the weather, downpours of rain, and other forms of violent damage away from the main parts of the building. From this it follows that relief works should not jut out beyond the covering of the location that they decorate and of which they are only a superficial part, for this would defeat the natural ultimate purpose of a cornice and be dangerous for the relief works themselves.\
Most of the relief works of the ancients are almost free-standing figures, the complete outline of which has been hollowed out. Now, relief works are deceptive images, and because of the reason for devising them, they are not the images themselves but only representations of them. The nature of art in painting as well as in poetry consists of imitation.\
Therefore everything that is produced in this way realistically and physically of the same size as it appears in nature is against the essence of art. Art should ensure that that which is not sublime seems to be sublime, and that which is sublime does not seem sublime.\
For this reason those figures that project far out in relief works should be regarded in the same way as those firm and actually erected columns among the decorations in a theater, which are merely intended to appear to us as pleasant artistic illusions. In this case art acquires, as someone has said of tragedy, more truth though deception, and untruth through truth. It is art that ensures that often a copy is more attractive than nature itself. A natural garden and living trees on the set of a theatre do not provide such a pleasant spectacle as when they have been successfully depicted by an artist\'92s hand. We find more to admire in a rose by van Huysum40 or in a poplar by Veerendael41 than in those the most skillful gardener has grown. A charming landscape in nature, indeed even the blessed Vale of Tempe in Thessaly, will probably not have the same effect on us that both the mind and the senses must experience through the charming brush-work of a Dietrich.42\
I can base our judgment of the relief works of the ancients on these experiences. The extensive collection of the Royal Antiquities in Dresden contains two excellent works of this kind. One is a Bacchanalia on a tombstone, and the other is a Sacrifice to Priapus on a large marble vessel.\
Making relief works is an unusual part of a sculptor\'92s art. Not every great sculptor has been successful in doing it. Matielli can serve as an example in this case. On the orders of the Emperor Karl VI models were made for their works on the two spiral columns in the Church of Saint Carlo Borromeo. Matielli,43 who had already gained great fame, was one of the most distinguished to be under consideration for this, but it was not his work that received the prize. The far too impressive figures of his model caused him to be robbed of the honor of such an important work, because the mass of the stone would be reduced by the great hollows and the columns would be weakened. The name of the artist whose models won the widest approval compared with his fellow competitors was Mader,44 who executed his designs on the columns in the most incomparable way. As is well-known, the work represents the saint to whom the church is dedicated.\
Generally the following points should be noted concerning this work. First, not every action and position in it is suitable, for example the extreme foreshortening, which should therefore have been avoided. Secondly, after the individual modeled figures had been ordered and grouped, the diameter of each of them at the deep point should have been measured according to a reduced scale in relation to the figures of the relief work itself. For example, if the diameter of a figure was one foot, then the size of the profile of the same figure, if it is to be made in\
relief at half the size or less, should be kept within three inches or less. Another point that must be observed is that the profiles should not be presented in isolated perspective but should be reduced according to a suitable declining scale. The greater the curve of the horizontal diameter, the greater is the art. Generally relief work lacks perspective, and in cases where such work has failed to win approval, it is mostly for this reason.\
As I intended to make only a brief comment on the relief works of the ancients, I notice that, as in the case of the ancient orator, I am almost in need of someone to help me strike the right note again. I have exceeded my limits, and I am put in mind of a certain observation made by some writers concerning the expression of objections to a work: one should make none unless they are related specifically to questionable points to be found in the work. I am reminded that my intention is to write a letter and not a book. And it also occurs to me occasionally that I myself could learn\
. . . ut vineta egomet caedam mea45\
from the ferocious attack against the author by some people who will not admit that one can write contradictory things about matters that one has agreed to deal with.\
The Romans had a god called Terminus, who supervised borders and milestones generally, and when it suited him, also the limits in arts and sciences. Nevertheless both Greeks and Romans passed judgment on works of art, even though they were not artists themselves, and their judgment seems to be valid for our artists as well. I also do not think that the sexton in the Temple of Peace in Rome, who probably had the register of the treasure consisting of the paintings of the most famous Greek masters that were hanging there, claimed for himself the monopoly on thoughts about them, as Pliny described most of the paintings,\
Publica materies privati juris sit. . .\
(Horace)46\
It is to be wished that artists themselves would take up their quills, following the example of a Pamphilus and an Apelles, and reveal the secrets of art to those who know how to make use of them.\
Ma di costor, che a lavorar s\'92accingono\
Quattro quinti, per Dio, non sanno leggere\
(Salvator Rosa, Satyme 3)47\
Two or three have served us well in this respect. The other writers among them have provided us only with historical reports about their companions. About the work that the famous Pietro da Cortona and Father\
Ottonelli48 had joined forces in attacking, one would have expected to have learned a great deal for much later generations of artists. However their work, apart from its historical reports, which can be found better executed in hundreds of books, serves almost no more use than\
Ne scombris tunicae desint piperique cuculli.\
(Sectani Satyrae)49\
How common and base are the observations on painting by the great Nicolas Poussin, which Bellori has conveyed to us from a manuscript as something unusual, and which he appended to the life of this artist.\
The author doubtless did not want to write for artists. They would also have been far too magnanimous to have wanted to play Aristarchus in respect to such a small work. I only want to make some objections to the author concerning a few small details that I am to some extent in a position to perceive, and I shall do so by daring to express just a few reflections.\
On the eleventh page the author has dared to declare a judgment by Bernini to be unfounded, and spoken out against a man whom one would only have to name to show respect for one of his writings. Bernini was the man who, at the very same age at which Michelangelo made the famous copy of a head of Pan, which is generally known as Studiolo, that is to say when he was eighteen years old, made a Daphne, in which he demonstrated that he had learned about the beautiful aspects of the works of the Greeks at an age when perhaps Raphael was still steeped in darkness and gloom.\
Bernini was one of those fortunate minds that reveal at the same time the blossom of spring and the fruit of autumn, and I do not think that it can be proved that his study of nature, which he held to in his mature years, did any harm to himself or his pupils. The softness of his flesh was the fruit of this study and had a lifelike quality and beauty of the highest degree that it is possible to reach in marble. The imitation of nature lends life to the figures and enlivens the forms, as Socrates said and Clito the sculptor concurred. \'93One must imitate nature itself and not an artist,\'94 replied Lysippus, the great sculptor, when he was asked whom among his predecessors he followed. It cannot be denied that the enthusiastic imitation of the ancients mostly leads to dullness, to which the imitation of nature cannot tempt us. The latter teaches us diversity, as nature itself is diverse, and artists who have studied nature cannot be reproached for frequent repetition. Guido, Le Brun, and some others, who studied primarily the works of antiquity, repeated the same kinds of facial features in many works. They had so assimilated a certain idea of beauty that they imbued their figures with it, without intending to.\
But concerning the mere imitation of nature to the neglect of the art of antiquity, I share completely the opinion of the author. But as examples\
of naturalists in painting I would have chosen other masters. Certainly too much has been said of the great Jordaens. But it is not only my judgment that should be accepted here. I refer to one that, like other judgments of painters, few would reject. One art expert has said: \'93Jacob Jordaens has more expression and truth than Rubens.\'94\
\'93Truth is the basis and cause of perfection and beauty. A thing, whatever its nature may be, cannot be perfect and beautiful if it is not truly everything that it must be, and if it does not have everything that it must have.\'94\
Assuming the rightness of the above judgment, then, according to the concept of truth in a famous original work, there are several justifications for placing Jordaens among the greatest original painters, rather than among those who merely ape ordinary nature. In this context I would rather replace this great painter with Rembrandt, and the Stella with a Raoux50 or a Watteau. All these painters do nothing different from what Euripides did in his time: they represent human beings as they are. In art nothing is small and insignificant, and perhaps something is to be gained from the so-called Dutch forms and figures, just as Bernini made use of caricatures. It has been said with assurance that he has to thank such exaggerated figures for one of the greatest accomplishments of his art, that is, the freedom of his hand movement, and since reading this, I have started to think differently about caricatures, and I believe that one has made a great step forward in art when one has acquired a skill in doing them. The author presents it as a merit of the artists of antiquity that they went beyond the limits of ordinary nature. Do not our masters of caricature do the same? And no one admires them for it. Some time ago great volumes of such work came to light for us to see, and few artists consider them worth looking at.\
Concerning the fourteenth page I shall present to the author a judgment made by our academies. He asserts in the tone of a lawmaker \'93the correctness of contour can only be learned from the Greeks.\'94 In our academies the teaching is generally that the ancients actually diverged from faithfulness to the outline of some parts of the body, and that on the clavicle, the elbow, the shinbone, the knees, and wherever else there is a lot of cartilage, the skin only appears to be drawn over the bones, without any really clear indications of the depths and hollows caused by apophyses and the cartilage of the joints. Young people are instructed to draw such parts, where there is not much flesh beneath the skin, in a more angular way, and to do the opposite where most fat is accumulated. Ordinarily it is regarded as an error if the outline is drawn more according to the taste of the ancients. I would hope that all the academies, in their entirety, could not be wrong.\
Parrhasius himself, \'93the greatest at making contours,\'94 was not able to create \'93the line that divides the perfect from the superfluous.\'94 It is\
reported that in wanting to avoid over-ornateness he fell into plainness. And perhaps Zeuxis maintained his contours like those of Rubens, if it is true that he drew some parts more fully, to make his figures more imposing and more complete. His female figures he created according to Homer\'92s ideas, whose women are powerfully built. The gentle Theocritus depicted his Helena as plump and large, and Raphael\'92s Venus in the Assembly of the Gods in the small Farnesian palace in Rome was conceived according to the same ideas of female beauty. Thus Rubens painted just as Homer and Theocritus imagined. What more can be said in his defense? The character of Raphael is outlined correctly and truthfully in the work, but would not the words that Antalcidas the Spartan said to the Sophist who wanted to read out a eulogy to Hercules, be also valid in this case? He said \'93Who can find fault with him?\'94 As for the beautiful details that it is claimed can be found in the Raphael in the Royal Gallery in Dresden and especially in the child on the arms of the Madonna, there are many different judgments concerning them.\
O <xi) Oavpa^suK;, xcruR sxsqokji yzXkaq.\
(Lucian, Epigrams l)51\
The author could just as laudably have adopted the character of a patriot attacking some people on the far side of the Alps, whom everything Dutch fills with loathing:\
Turpis Romano Belgicus ore color.\
(Propertius, Elegies)52\
Is not the magic of colors something so essential that no painting without it gives general pleasure, and that through it many errors are partly passed over and partly not noticed at all? This, together with their great knowledge about light and shadow, is what make the Dutch works so valuable. It is to painting what melody and the harmony of the verses are to a poem. Through this magic of poetic colors the weaknesses disappear, and someone who is capable of reading it with the fiery passion with which it was composed will be transported by the divine harmony into such rapture that he has no time to think of anything objectionable about it.\
When contemplating a painting there is something that must come first. Someone has said that this is delight to the eyes. And this consists of the first attraction that it has, rather than that which follows only with reflection, and which appeals to reason. Moreover, coloring is unique to paintings. Draftsmanship can be sought in every design, copperplate engraving, and the like. And indeed artists seem to have accomplished the latter earlier than the former. A great writer on art has also commented that colorists acquired a reputation much later than poetic painters.\
Experts know the extent to which the famous Poussin was successful in coloring. And all those\
Qui rem Romanam Latiumque augescere student\
(Ennius)53\
will recognize the Dutch masters as their masters in this respect. Actually, a painter really does no more than ape nature, and the more successfully he apes it, the more perfect he is.\
Ast heic, quern nunc tu tarn turpiter increpuisti.\
(Ennius)54\
The gentle Van der Werf, whose works are worth their weight in gold and adorn only the cabinets55 of great men, has made it impossible for the brush of any Italian painter to imitate them. They are works that draw to themselves the attention of the ignorant, the enthusiast, and the expert. \'93Every poet who gives pleasure,\'94 the critical English poet says, \'93has never written badly,\'9456 and if the Dutch painter is praised in this way, then the applause for him is more general that that which the most accurate drawing by Poussin can hope for.\
Let them show me many paintings that reveal inventiveness, good composition, and coloring, as some by the hand of Gerard de Lairesse57 do. All impartial artists in Paris who know the most excellent and without doubt the foremost work in Monsieur de la Boixiere\'92s cabinet of pictures, by this I mean the Stratonice, must approve of what I say.\
The story of the sketch the artist carried out in this case is not the most common one. King Seleucus I gave up his wife Stratonice, a daughter of the famous Demetrius Poliorcetes, to his son Antiochus, who had fallen dangerously ill through his intense affection for the queen, who was his stepmother. After a thorough investigation, the doctor, Eristratus, discovered the true cause of it and also that the only means of curing the prince was for the father to look favorably on his son\'92s love. The king gave up his wife and at the same time gave Antiochus the title of King of the Orient.\
Lairesse has painted this story twice. The Stratonice of Monsieur Boixiere is the smaller one. The figures are about eighteen inches tall, and those in the background are of a different size.\
The main figure in the painting, Stratonice, is the most noble figure. It is a figure which would do credit to the school of Raphael itself. The most beautiful queen,\
Colle sub Idao vincere digna Deas (Ovid, The Art of Love)^\
Fig. 2. Gerard deLairesse, Antiochus and Stratonice, 1671-75, oil on panel. On loan to the Rijksmuseum Twenthe by the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam. Photo: Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, Wikimedia Commons.\
She approaches with slow doubtful steps the bed of the man destined to be her new husband, but still in the manner of a mother, or rather of a holy vestal virgin. In her face, which is shown in the most beautiful profile, can be read shame and at the same time willing submission to the order of the king. She has the gentleness of her sex, the majesty of a queen, the reverence suitable to a sacred action, and in her behavior all the wisdom that is required in such fine and extraordinary circumstances as at that moment. Her robe was conceived with mastery and can teach artists how to render the purple used by the ancients. It is not generally known that their purple had the color of vine leaves when they begin to wither and at the same time start to turn reddish.\
King Seleucus stands behind her in a dark garment, in order emphasize the main figure even more, partly also so as not to confuse Stratonice and partly not to embarrass the prince, or disturb his pleasure. Both expectation and contentment at the same time are depicted in the Icing\'92s face, which the artist has taken from the profiles of the best heads on his coins.\
The prince, a beautiful young man, who sits upright and half naked on his bed, resembles his father and his coins. His pale face is a testimony to the fever that has raged in his veins, but it is easy to believe that there are signs of the beginning of a recovery in the little bit of redness starting to grow in him, which is not caused by his embarrassment.\
The doctor and priest Eristratus, who stands in front of the bed and is as venerable as Homer\'92s Calchas, is the person who speaks with the authority of the king and explains to the prince the king\'92s will. And as he leads the queen towards him with the one hand, he hands the diadem over to him with the other. Delight and astonishment are about to burst forth from the prince\'92s face as the queen approaches him,\
And his heart surges toward every glance she gives.\
(Albrecht von Haller)59\
But he retains them with a noble calm out of respect for her, so that it seems that he is at the same time reflecting on his happiness with his head bowed.\
All the persons in the action have been given characters by the artist with such wisdom, that each of them seems to lend grandeur and forcefulness to the others.\
The greatest amount of light falls on Stratonice, as she is the main person, and she attracts attention first. The priest stands in a weaker light but stands out by the action given to him. He is the speaker, and apart from him a general silence and attentiveness prevails. The prince, who after the main figure deserves our attention above all, is illuminated more. And as the artist had the wisdom to choose a beautiful queen as the most prominent part of his group, rather than a sick prince, who according to the nature of the event he should have chosen, the latter nevertheless is because of his expression the most excellent aspect of the whole painting. All the secrets of art are to be found in that face.\
quales nequeo monstrare & sentio tantum.\
(Juvenal, Satires 7)60\
The stirrings of the soul, which seem to conflict with each other, blend together here in peaceful calm. There are signs of recovery in the ailing face, like the advance indications of the first approaching glimpses of the dawn, which seem to promise day, indeed a beautiful day, under the veil of night.\
The mind and taste of the artist are evident in the whole work, including the vases, which were modeled on the best works of their kind in antiquity. The frame of the table in front of the bed he rendered as ivory, just as Homer described it.\
In the background of the painting there is depicted some splendid Greek architecture, the ornaments on which seem to make reference to the action. The entablature on a portal is supported by caryatids embracing each other, as images of a tender friendship between father and son and at the same time of a conjugal bond.\
Through the truthfulness of his story the artist reveals himself to be a poet, and he made the subsidiary parts allegorical in order to depict certain circumstances by the use of symbols. The sphinxes on the prince\'92s bed refer to the doctor\'92s investigations and especially the discovery of the cause of his illness.\
I have been told that young artists on the other side of the mountains who have seen this masterpiece have walked by it, without inquiring about the actual conception of the painting, when they caught sight of the prince\'92s arm, which has been made a little too thick. If Minerva herself wished to clear away the mist clouding certain people, such as Diomedes, they would still not gain any enlightenment.\
. . . Pauci dignoscere possunt\
Vera bona atque illis multum diversa, remota\
Erroris nebula.\
(Juvenal, Satires)61\
I have made a long aside. But I find it nevertheless reasonable to make well-known a work that can be ranked among the first in the world, as it has attracted so few experts. I now return to the work itself again.\
I cannot help thinking that those aspects of Raphael\'92s figures that are said to be covered by the concept of a \'93noble simplicity and calm greatness\'94 could be described in more general terms as \'93nature at rest,\'94 in the words of two notable writers. It is true that this great doctrine provides an excellent way of classifying the most beautiful Greek works, but the application of it indiscriminately to young draftsmen would have just as worrying consequences as the doctrine of conciseness would have to the writing style of young people, whom it would tempt into writing in a dry, hard, and unsympathetic way. \'93With young people,\'94 Cicero said, \'93there must always be something superfluous, from which one wishes to take something away, for that which comes to maturity too quickly cannot retain its sap for long. With grapevines it is preferable to cut off the shoots that are too young rather than encourage new vines, if the stem is not in a good condition.\'94 Moreover, figures in an undisturbed calm state are regarded by the greater part of humanity in the same way as a speech would be when it was read out in former times in front of the Areopagites, who had a strict rule prohibiting the speaker from expressing any kind of arousal of even the most human and most gentle emotions. And all such pictures seem to present depictions of young Spartans who had to hide their hands under their coats and enter in complete silence, not looking in any direction, but only at the earth in front of them.\
I am also not completely of the same opinion as the author concerning allegory in painting. By applying it in all representations and in all situations painting would suffer in the same way as the art of measurement\
did through algebra. Access to the one kind of art would become as difficult as it has become to the other. It could not fail to be the case that allegory would turn all paintings into hieroglyphs.\
Even the Greeks did not, as the author wishes to persuade us, think generally in the same way as the Egyptians. The ceiling in the Temple of Juno in Samos was not painted in a more learned way than the Farnesian gallery. It depicted the lovers\'92 quarrels between Jupiter and Juno, and on the front of a temple to Ceres in Eleuisis there was nothing but the simple depiction of a custom performed in the service of the goddess. There were two large stones, one lying on top of the other, between which the priests looked every year for an inscription giving them instructions concerning the annual sacrifices, because they were never the same from one year to the next.\
Concerning the representation of that which is not sensory, I could have wished for more explanation of it, because I have heard it said by someone that in the depiction of such things the situation is similar to that of a mathematical point that can only be imagined. This person agrees with the man who seems to restrict painting to only those things that are visible. For concerning hieroglyphs, he continued, by which the most abstract ideas can be indicated, such as youth by the number sixteen, and impossibility by two feet on water, then we would have to consider them for the most part as monograms rather than images. Such a pictographic language would provide opportunities for chimera and would be more difficult to learn than Chinese. And the pictures would become not dissimilar to the paintings of the latter country.\
This same opponent of all allegories believes that Parrhasius was able to represent all the contradictions that he had noticed among the Athenians without the aid of allegory, and perhaps he had managed to achieve this in more than one work. If he does it in this way,\
Et sapit, & mecum facit, & love iudicat aequo.\
(Horace)62\
The death sentence on the commanders of the Athenian fleet after their victory over the Lacedaemonians near the Arginusae Islands provided the artist with a very sensory and fruitful image that enabled him to represent the Athenians as both kind and cruel.\
The famous Theramenes, one of the commanders, accused his colleagues of not having gathered together the bodies of those who had fallen in the battle, to enable last respects to be paid to them. This was sufficient to make the greater part of the people furious with the victors, only six of whom came back to Athens. The others had avoided the storm. Theramenes held a very moving speech, in which he made frequent pauses to enable the laments of those who had lost their parents\
or relatives to be heard. At the same time he arranged for a man to appear who claimed to have heard the last words of the drowned men, who had screamed for revenge against their commanders. The wise man Socrates, who was at that time a member of the council, declared that he and several others were against the accusation, but in vain. The brave victors, instead of receiving the tributes in their honor that they hoped for, were condemned to death. One of them was the only son of Pericles by the famous Aspasia.\
Parrhasius, who experienced this event, showed how much more skillful he was by revealing the true characters of the people taking part without the use of allegory and lending thus to his image a meaning that went further than the mere representation of a story. A modern artist would still be content with the latter, to depict this contradiction in the character of the Athenians.\
And finally, the very same person thinks the attempt to burden artists and especially painters with this matter of allegory comes down to the same demand that Columella63 made to a fellow countryman: he would prefer it if the other had been very knowledgeable about the world, like Democritus, Pythagoras, and Eudoxus.\
Can one hope for more success with allegories in decorations than with those in paintings? I think the author would find greater difficulty in applying his supposed learned images in this case than Virgil did in putting the names of Vibius Caudex, Tanaquil Lucumo, or Decius Mus into heroic verse.\
It is to be supposed that the application of shell work in decorations on architecture and elsewhere is now generally accepted. Is there then less of what is natural in the ornamentation it is intended to provide than in Corinthian capitals, if one considers what is known about their presumed origins? A basket that had been placed on the grave of a young girl from Corinth and filled with some of her toys and then covered with a broad tile was the occasion for the form of this capital. An acanthus plant grew out from under it and covered it. The sculptor Callimachus found this overgrown basket so charming that he created the first capital for a Corinthian column based on this model.\
So this capital is a basket with leaves, and it is intended to carry the entire entablature on a column. Perhaps in the time of Pericles it was found insufficiently in accordance with nature and reason, as it seemed strange to a famous writer that instead of Corinthian columns the Temple of Minerva in Athens had been given Doric ones. With time this apparent inconsistency seemed natural, and people became used to no longer regarding a basket on which a whole building was resting as objectionable:\
Quodque fuit vitium, desinit esse mora.\
(Ovid, The Art of Love)64\
Our artists do not transgress any prescribed laws in art when they invent new ornaments, which have always been arbitrary: invention does not have any penal laws imposed on it, as it did among the Egyptians. Plants and the shape of a shell have always had something so charming about them that poets and artists have even invented exceptionally large shells and provided the Goddess of Love with them to serve as a carriage. The Ancile shield, which was to the Romans what the Palladium was to Troy, had incisions in the form of a shell, and there are even old lamps decorated with shells.\
The light and easily disposable shields in the form of shells seem to have been provided for artists by nature itself in the form of the marvelous coils of the endless variety of sea snails.\
It is not my intention in the least to set myself up as a champion of the unskilled decorators of our times. I only wish to cite the reasons given by a whole guild (artists will excuse my use of this word), by which they have attempted to demonstrate the thoroughness of their procedure. The fairness of this is easily recognized.\
It is reported that the painters and sculptors in Paris had disputed the use of the name of artists for those who made decorations, because the understanding of neither worker nor enthusiast was employed in their works, as they were produced not by nature but by deliberate artifice. Their defense is said to have been as follows.\
We follow nature in our work, and our decorations develop, like the bark of a tree, from various arbitrary incisions in it. The bark takes on various forms in its growth.\
Then art joins with playful nature and improves and helps it. This is the way we follow in our decorations and which gives the appearance that most of them, also in the works of the ancients, have been taken from trees, plants, and their fruits.\
The first and general rule in this case is thus diversity (if one is to grant that the defense quoted is right), and according to this, nature operates, it would seem, without observing any other rules. This insight is revealed by the style of decorations that modern artists have chosen. They learned to recognize that in nature nothing is exactly the same as anything else. They departed from the painstaking use of identical forms and left it up to the parts of their decorations to fit together, as Epicurus had done with atoms. A nation that was the first in modern times to free itself from all the constraints of civil society became also our teacher on freedom in this aspect of art. This way of working was called Baroque taste, probably from a word that is used to refer to pearls and teeth, which are unequal in size.\
And finally, I believe that a shell has just as much right to be part of an ornament as an ox or a sheep\'92s head. It is known that the ancients placed such heads separated from the skins in the friezes, especially between the\
three slits in the Doric order of columns, or in the metopes. They can also be found in the Corinthian frieze of an old Temple of the Vestal Virgins in Tivoli; on gravestones, such as on a gravestone of the Metella family near Rome, and on one for Munatius Plancus near Gaeta; and on vases, such as on two among the Royal Antiquities in Dresden. A few more modern architects, who perhaps regarded these heads as improper, replaced them with their own friezes, which are decorated partly with thunderbolts such as Jupiter used to wield, and partly with roses, as Vignola has done, or as Palladio and Scamozzi have done.\
If therefore decorations are an imitation of the playfulness of nature, as can be deduced from the above, then applying any amount of learning about allegory will not make them more beautiful, but rather spoil them. And to tell the truth, it is not possible to provide many examples of allegorical decoration by the ancients.\
For example, I do not know what kind of beauty or meaning the famous engraver Mentor was seeking in the lizard he engraved on a cup. For\
. . . picti squallentia terga lacerti (Virgil, Georgies 4.13 )65\
forms a charming image on a floral piece by an artist like Rachel Ruysch, it is true, but not on drinking vessel. And what kind of secret meaning do grapevines with birds that are eating the grapes on them have on a pot for collecting ashes? Perhaps these images are to be considered as empty and arbitrary as the story of Ganymede worked into a coat that Aeneas gave to Cloanthus as a prize in the contest on board ship.\
And what kind of inconsistencies can be found among the trophies in a royal hunting lodge? Does the author, as an enthusiastic champion of Greek taste, believe that it stretches so far as to include the imitation of King Philip, and of Macedonians in general, of whom Pausanias reports that they did not set up any trophies? A Diana, with some nymphs in her entourage, together with the rest of her hunting equipment,\
Quales exercet Diana choros, quam mille secutae Hinc atque hinc glomerantur Oreades . . .\
(Virgil)66\
would seem to be more appropriate to the location. The ancient Romans hung up on the outside of their doors the weapons of their vanquished enemies, which the buyer of a house was not allowed to take down, to provide a constant reminder of the bravery of the owner of the house. If people had had the same intention for trophies in former times, then I\
think they would not have been put up in the wrong place at an inappropriate time for great men.\
I would like to see a response to my letter soon. That it is made public cannot displease you very much, my friend. Among the fraternity of writers it has been the practice to deal with letters in the same way as in the theatre, where a lover who talks to himself, at the same time regards the whole of the stalls as his most intimate friend. On the other hand it is no less reasonable that letters,\
Quos legeret tereretque viritim publicus usus\
(Horace)67\
should be accepted,\
... & hanc veniam petimusque damusque vicissim.\
(Horace)68\
Explanation of Thoughts on the Imitation of Greek Works in Painting and the Art of Sculpture and Response to the Open Letter on These Thoughts (1755-56)\
I could not believe that my little work would deserve such attention and stir up such judgments. It was written only for a few experts on the arts, and for this reason it seemed superfluous to lend it a certain learned air, which a work can acquire through the citation of books. Artists understand what is written in a few words about art, and since most of them \'93consider it foolish,\'94 and must consider it so, \'93to spend more time on reading than on writing,\'94 as an ancient orator has taught us, then if one cannot teach them anything new, one should at least make oneself agreeable to them through brevity. And I am generally of the opinion that as what is beautiful in art depends more on fine senses and refined taste than on deep reflection, the words of Neoptolemus, \'93Philosophize, but in a few words,\'94 should especially be observed in works of this kind.\
Some parts of my work are amenable to explanation, and as objections to it by an unnamed person have come to light, it would be reasonable for me to explain myself and at the same time provide a response. The circumstances, however, in which I find myself due to my imminent journey do not allow me to do either the one or the other in the way I have planned. The author of the Open Letter, as a reasonable person, will also have been able to guess my response to some of his reflections: namely that he would receive no response. I am just as unmoved when I hear the hue and cry against the works of Correggio, about which it is certainly known not only that they have gone to Sweden but also that they have been hung in the royal stables in Stockholm. My defense would be not much different from that of Aemilius Scaurus against Valerius of Sucro: \'93This man denies, and I affirm. Romans! Which of us do you believe?\'94\
What is more, this report can be understood even less in my case than in that of Count Tessin as being detrimental to the Swedish nation. I do not know whether the well-read author of the detailed description of the life of Queen Christina judged matters in a different way, because he has not left us any report about the treasure trove of paintings that were taken from Prague to Stockholm, about the hitherto unknown generosity shown by the queen to the painter Bourdon,1 or about the bad\
use to which such famous works by Correggio were put. In a description of a journey through Sweden by a famous man in the service of the crown of that country it is reported that in Linkoping there is a grammar school2 provided with seven tutors but not a single craftsman or doctor. This could be interpreted unfavorably for the author, but nevertheless it should not be.\
Concerning negligence in the works of the Greek artists, I would have explained myself at greater length if I had been given the leisure to do so. The Greeks were familiar with the negligence that goes with being learned, as their judgment of Protogenes\'92s partridge shows. But it also known that the artist completely erased it. The Jupiter by Phidias was also made according to the most sublime concepts of a divinity that can fulfill everything. It was an image like that of Homer\'92s Eris, who stood on the earth and whose head reached to heaven. It was also designed according to the sense of the most sacred poetry: \'93Who can comprehend him? etc.\'94 It has seemed reasonable to excuse and indeed to consider necessary the kind of freedom that Raphael allowed himself, to depart from natural conditions in his cartoon of Peter catching fish. The criticism of Diomedes seemed to me to be thorough, but for that reason not against me. The action in the work, considered by itself, and the noble outline and expression will always remain for our artists a grand example to imitate. In other respects the Diomedes by Dioscorides did not suit my purpose.\
My thoughts concerning the imitation of Greek works in painting and sculpture consist of four main points. 1. The perfect nature of the Greeks. 2. The merits of their works. 3. The imitation of them. 4. The Greek ways of thinking in works of art, especially in regard to allegory.\
The first point I have attempted to make probable. I will not be able to convince completely in this respect, even with the most uncommon reports. These merits of the Greeks would seem to be based probably much less on nature itself, and on the influence of the climate, than on their education.\
Meanwhile, the favorable situation of their country was always the basic cause, and the variation in the air and food caused distinctions among the Greeks themselves, between the Athenians and their closest neighbors beyond the mountains.\
Nature in every country has provided its natives as well as its newcomers with a form unique to them and a similar way of thinking. The Gauls were one nation, just as the Franks from Germany were, who were their descendants. The first blind rage when the former nation attacked was, already in the time of Caesar, as disadvantageous to them as it was to the latter in more recent times. The former had certain other qualities that are still characteristic of the nation today, and the Emperor Julian reports that in his time there were more dancers than citizens in Paris.\
The Spaniards on the other hand have always acted with caution and in a somewhat cold-blooded way, and in this very way they made it so difficult for the Romans to conquer their land.\
One may judge whether the Western Goths, Mauritanians, and other peoples who flooded over this land, have taken on the character of the ancient Iberians or not. It may help to use the comparison a famous writer used in describing the former and present qualities of some nations.\
It must have been obvious that the climate and the air had the same kind of effect on what the Greeks produced, and this effect must have been due to the excellent situation of the country. Moderate weather prevailed throughout all the seasons, and the cool winds from the sea caressed the pleasant islands in the Ionian Sea and the seashore of the mainland. Presumably it was also for this reason that in the Peloponnese all the towns were situated by the sea, as Cicero attempts to demonstrate from the writings of Dichaearchus.3\
In such a moderate climate, with an equal balance of warmth and cold, a creature senses that its influence is equally distributed. All fruits attain their full ripeness and even the wild forms of them acquire a better nature, just like animals, which thrive better and give birth more often. Such a climate, Hippocrates says, develops human beings who are creatures of the most well-formed growth, and a harmony between inclination and form. The proof of this is Georgia, the land of beautiful people, which a fine bright climate fills with fruitfulness. Water alone is said to play such an important part in the form of our bodies that the Indians say that there can be no beautiful people in lands where the water is not good. And the oracle itself endowed the waters of Arethusa with the effect of making beautiful human beings.\
It seems to me that it is possible to deduce from the language of the Greeks something about the composition of their bodies. With all peoples nature develops language tools under the influence of the climate in their countries, so that there are races who, like the Troglodytes, whistle rather than speak, and others who can speak without moving their lips. The Phasians in Greece made a husky sound, as is also said of the English.\
In a raw climate hard tones are produced, and the parts of the body that serve to produce them do not need to be the finest.\
The merit of Greek above all other known languages is indisputable, and here I am talking not of its richness but of its melodious sound. All Nordic languages are overloaded with consonants, which often lend them an unpleasant character. In the Greek language, on the other hand, vowels are alternated with them in such a way that every consonant has a vowel that accompanies it. Two vowels do not go easily together with one consonant, without one being at once drawn together with the other into one. The gentle nature of the language does not suffer when a syllable ends with the three harsh letters (\'a9OX), and a change of letters,\
produced by the same mechanism of speech, takes place, if in that way the harshness of the sound can be remedied. A few words that seem to us to be harsh cannot be cited in objection, as we know as little about the real pronunciation of Greek as we do of the Roman language. This all lent the language a gentle flow, made the sound of the words multifarious, and facilitated at the same time the inimitable way the elements of the language combined with each other. I do not want to propose that syllables can be given their true values in ordinary speech as well, which cannot be considered in western languages. Cannot conclusions be drawn from the melodious sound of the Greek language concerning the mechanisms of language itself? We have therefore some right to believe that Homer understood the language of the gods to be Greek and the language of human beings to be Phrygian.\
It was primarily the abundance of vowels that made the Greek language more able to express the form and essence of a thing, through the sound and sequence of words. In two lines of Homer we are made more aware of the pressure, the speed, and the reduced force of the arrow shot at Menelaus by Pandarus as it penetrates him, as well as of the slowness as it passes through and the blocking of its progress, through the sound rather than the words themselves. We believe we can really see the arrow being shot, travelling through the air, and penetrating Menelaus\'92s shield.\
The description of the horde of Myrmidons gathered together by Achilles, in which shield is against shield, helmet against helmet, and man against man, is of this kind, and the imitation of it has always been accomplished inadequately. This description is contained within one single line, but it must be read in order to feel its beautiful qualities. In these cases it would be a false concept of language if it was imagined to be like a stream without any sound (a comparison referring to Plato\'92s writing style). It became a mighty river, and could rise like the winds that tore Ulysses\'92s sails. By the sound of the words that described only a three- or fourfold tear the sail seems to split into a thousand pieces. But apart from in such an essential expression such words were considered to be harsh and unpleasant.\
Such a language required therefore fine and rapidly effective mechanisms, for which the languages of other peoples, and the Roman language itself, did not seem to be made. Thus a Greek church father complained that the Roman laws were written in a language that sounded horrible.\
If nature proceeds in the construction of the body as it does in developing the mechanisms of language, then Greeks were made of a fine material. Nerves and muscles were resilient in the most sensitive way and encouraged the most flexible movements of the body. As a result of this, in all their actions a certain supple and lithe agreeableness expressed itself, which was accompanied by a cheerful and joyous disposition. One has to imagine bodies that maintained a true balance between being\
lean and being fleshy. To deviate to either side seemed ridiculous to the Greeks, and their poets made fun of people such as Cinesias, Philetas, and Agoracritus.4\
This concept of the nature of the Greeks could perhaps be seen to depict them as weaklings, who were weakened even more through being permitted early to enjoy their senses. I can explain what I mean to some extent by citing Pericles\'92s defense of the Athenians against Sparta with regard to their customs, if I may be allowed to interpret it as referring to the nation as a whole. For the constitution of Sparta was different from that of other Greeks in all respects. \'93The Spartans,\'94 says Pericles, \'93try to attain masculine strength from their youth on through forceful exercises, but we live in a certain lax manner, and we nevertheless still dare to undertake such risky actions. And as we confront danger more in a leisurely fashion than with long reflection on the undertakings, and not so much because it is stipulated by law as from a generous spirit of volunteering, we do not worry about that which stands before us, and if it really happens to us, then we are no less brave in bearing it than those who prepare themselves for it through constant exercise. We love attractiveness without excess and wisdom without weakness. Our most excellent quality is that we are made for great undertakings.\'945\
I cannot and will not assert that all Greeks were equally beautiful: among the Greeks in front of Troy there was only one Thersites. But it is remarkable that in those areas where the arts flourished the most beautiful human beings were also produced. Thebes had a heavy climate, and the inhabitants were heavy and strong, which is also according to what Hippocrates observed about such marshy and watery areas. The ancients had also already noticed that this city had fewer poets and learned men to show, apart from Pindar alone, than Sparta, which only had Aleman. The Attic area, however, enjoyed a clear and bright climate, which refined the senses (as was said of the Athenians), and as a result enabled the people to develop well-proportioned bodies. And Athens was the most distinguished seat of the arts. This very fact can be proved by the examples of Sicyon, Corinth, Rhodes, Ephesus, and so on, which were schools for artists, and where they therefore were not lacking in beautiful models. The source, which was cited from Aristophanes in the Open Letter as proof of a natural lack among the Athenians, I take as it must be taken. The poet\'92s joke is based on a fable about Theseus. Moderately large parts in that area where\
Sedet aeternumque sedebit Infelix Theseus,\
(Virgil)6\
were considered Attic beauty. It is said that Theseus was freed by Hercules from captivity among the Thesprotians but not without the loss of those\
parts mentioned, and that he passed on this feature to his descendants as part of their inheritance. So whoever was made in such a way could boast of being descended in a direct line from Theseus, in the same way as a birthmark in the shape of a spear signified a descendant of Sparta. It has also been noticed that the Greek artists in this area imitated the economy they found in nature.\
In Greece there was also always that core of the nation in which nature had shown itself to be generous but not extravagant. Its colonies in foreign lands suffered almost the same fate as Greek eloquence when it left its borders. \'93As soon as eloquence,\'94 says Cicero, \'93departed from the Athenian harbor, it adopted foreign manners in all the islands it touched, and in the whole of Asia, which it passed through, and was robbed entirely of its healthy Attic mode of expression, and likewise its general health.\'94 The Ionians, who were led by Neleus from Greece to Asia after the return of the Heracleidae, became more lustful in the hotter climate. Their language acquired a more effortless quality because of the large number of vowels in a single word. Being in the same climatic conditions the customs of the nearby islands were no different from those of the Ionians. A single coin from the island of Lesbos can serve here as proof. A certain deviation in the nature of their bodies from that of their forefathers must have been obvious.\
An even greater change must have taken place among the more remote colonies of the Greeks. Those who had settled in Africa, in the area of Pithecusae, began to worship monkeys as seriously as the natives; they even named their children after this animal.\
The present inhabitants of Greece are a metal that has been smelted together with various other added metals, in which however the bulk of the material remains distinguishable. Barbarism destroyed knowledge down to the very first seed of it, and the whole land is cloaked in ignorance. Their education, spirit, and customs were suffocated under harsh rule, and not a trace of freedom remains. The monuments of antiquity have been destroyed more and more as time has gone by, and partly removed, and in English gardens there now stand columns from the Temple of Apollo at Delos. Even Nature in that land has lost its primary condition through neglect. The plants on Crete were preferred to all others in the world, and now by the streams and rivers, where they might have been found, there are nothing but wild growths and common wild plants. And how could it be otherwise, as whole areas, such as the Isle of Samos, which was able to endure a lengthy and costly war at sea with Athens, were laid waste.\
With all the change and the miserable prospect of the land, with the restriction of freely blowing winds by the wild and overgrown banks, and the lack of many convenient features, modern Greeks have retained nevertheless many of the merits of the ancient nation. The inhabitants of\
many islands (which are inhabited by the Greeks more than the mainland), as far as Asia Minor, are the most beautiful people, especially in the case of the fair sex, according to evidence provided by all travelers.\
The Attic landscape still provides us now, as it did in the past, with a glimpse of human affection. All the herdsmen and workers in the fields bid the traveling companions Spon and Wheler7 welcome and were the first to express their greetings and good wishes. It can still be seen nowadays that the natives show a fine intelligence and skillfulness in all their undertakings.\
It has occurred to some people that early exercise of the beautiful forms of Greek youths was more harmful than beneficial. It could be believed that straining the nerves and muscles might lend the youthful outline of their delicate bodies a rather angular quality suitable for combat instead of lending it gentle vitality. The answer to this is to be found in the character of the nation. Their way of acting and thinking was light and natural. They carried out their tasks, as Pericles says, with a certain casualness, and from some of Plato\'92s conversations it is possible to get some idea of how the young men did their exercises in their gymnasia while joking and in a joyful manner. And that is why he expresses the wish in his Republic that old people should meet there, to remember the delights of their youth.\
Their games started mostly at sunrise, and it often happened that Socrates visited these places as early as that. The early hours were preferred, to avoid becoming exhausted in the heat, and as soon as their clothes had been removed, the body was covered with oil, but with the finest Attic oil, partly to protect themselves from the morning air to which they were sensitive, and as was also done at other times when it was extremely cold, and partly to reduce intense evaporation, which should only remove any excess. The oil was also said to have the quality of making them stronger. After finishing their exercises they generally went into a bath, where their bodies were anointed again with oil, and Homer says that a person coming fresh from a bath in this way looks taller and stronger, and resembles the immortal gods.\
On a vase owned by Carl Patin,8 in which he surmises that the ashes of a famous fighter are preserved, one can get a clear idea of the various types and grades of wrestling among the ancients.\
If the ancients were always barefoot, as they themselves represented the people of the heroic age, or always wore tied-on soles, as is generally believed, then the shape of their feet would have suffered. But it can be proved that they paid more attention to how they covered and decorated their feet than we do. The Greeks had more than ten names by which they identified their shoes.\
The covering they wore round their hips during the games had already been disposed of before the time when the arts began to flourish\
in Greece. And this was not without benefit to the artists. Concerning the food given to the wrestlers in the great games in very ancient times, I found it more suitable to talk of food made with milk in general than of soft cheese.\
I recall here that the custom among the first Christians of being baptized completely naked has also been considered strange and unprov-able. I have provided my evidence in a note. I cannot become involved at length with secondary matters.\
I do not know whether I may refer to the suppositions that I consider probable concerning the more perfect nature of the ancient Greeks. Concerning the second point I would gain much by brevity.\
Charmoleos, a young man from Megara, one of whose kisses was valued at two talents, must indeed have been worthy of serving as a model for an Apollo, and every day artists could see a youth such as Charmoleos, Alcibiades, Charmides, and Adeimantus for several hours, observing them as they wished.\
The attention of artists in Paris, however, should be drawn to a children\'92s game, and what is more, the outer parts of bodies, which are only visible when swimming and bathing, are said to be seen everywhere without any covering. I doubt whether anyone who claims to be able to find more in all Frenchmen than the Greeks could find in their Alcibiades could make such a bold assertion.\
I could also use the previous points in answer to the judgment by the academies cited in the Open Letter that certain parts of the body should be drawn in a more angular fashion than was done among the ancients. It was fortunate for the Greeks and their artists that their bodies had a certain youthful fullness. And they must have had this, for on Greek statues the knuckles on the hands are shown to be sufficiently angular, which was not the case with other examples mentioned in the Open Letter. Thus it is very likely that they found that nature had made them that way.\
The famous Borghese fighter by the hand of Agasias of Ephesus does not have the angular quality and the bones mentioned where modern commentators tell us they should be. But they are where they are to be found on other Greek statues. Perhaps the fighter is a statue that stood formerly in a place where the great games were held in Greece, where such a statue was set up to every victor. These statues must have been modeled very precisely after the very pose the victor was holding when he won his prize. And the judges of the Olympic games supervised the proportions very closely. Cannot it be concluded from this that the artists created everything from nature?\
Many have already written about the second and third points of my work. My intention, as must be obvious, was thus only to mention in a few words the merit of the ancient Greeks and the imitation of them. Our modern way of viewing things requires a lot of proof of such matters if\
they are to be considered generally valid, and it presupposes a not insubstantial provisional understanding. Meanwhile, the judgments of many writers on the works of art of the ancients are at times no more mature than many judgments on their writings. Could one expect a sound judgment on Greek works of art from the kind of judge who generally wishes to write about fine arts but has learned so little about their sources that he attributes the quality of simplicity to Thucydides, whose style of writing was obscure to Cicero, as he himself admits, because of its coarse brevity and haughtiness. Thucydides cannot seem to be like that to anyone, even if dressed up in an unfamiliar way. Another writer seems to be so little acquainted with Diodorus of Sicily that he considers him to be a historian who pursues dainty things. And many admire something about the works of the ancients that does not deserve any attention. A travel writer has said: \'93For experts the cord with which Dirce is tied to the ox is the most beautiful thing about the greatest group from antiquity, which is known by the name of il Toro Farnese.\'949\
Ah miser aegrota putruit cui mente salillum.10\
I know the merits of the modern artists who are contrasted with those from antiquity in the Open Letter, but I know also that the former became what they are through imitation of the latter, and it would be possible to prove that where they have deviated from the imitation of the ancients, all of them have generally succumbed to many mistakes made by the major part of those modern artists at whom alone I was aiming in that very work of mine.\
Concerning the outline of the bodies, it appears that the study of nature that Bernini held to in his mature years certainly led this great artist away from beautiful form. A Caritas by his hand on the tomb of Pope Urban VIII is said to be just too fleshy, and this very virtue on the tomb of Alexander VII has even been considered ugly. What is certain is that no use could be made of the statue of King Louis XIV on horseback, which Bernini worked on for fifteen years. The king was represented in the act of attempting to ride up a mountain representing honor. But the action of the hero as well as that of the horse is just too wild and too exaggerated. So the statue was made into one of Curtius plunging into a muddy pool, and it now stands in the garden of the Tuileries. The most careful observation of nature alone cannot therefore be sufficient for a perfect understanding of beauty, just as the study of anatomy alone cannot teach us about the proportions of the body. According to his own report, Lairesse took them from the skeleton by the famous Bidloo.11 The former can be considered an expert in his art, and nevertheless it has been found that he did not go far enough. The good Roman school would seldom err in this respect. It cannot be denied that Raphael\'92s Venus at the Banquet of the\
Gods seems to be too heavy, and I do not dare to defend the name of this great man with regard to a \'93Murder of the Innocents\'94 by him, engraved by Marcantonio, concerning this point, as has been done in a rare work on painting. The breasts of the female figures are far too full, and the murderers by contrast have emaciated bodies. It is believed that the intention of this contrapposto was to represent the murderers as more repulsive. One should not admire everything: even the sun has spots on it.\
If one follows Raphael in his best period and style, then, as with him, there is no need of someone to defend you. And there is no point in citing Parrhasius and Zeuxis in the Open Letter in this respect, and generally to excuse the use of forms in Dutch paintings. It is true that the passage referred to in Pliny concerning Parrhasius is explained in the way it was understood in its context, that is to say \'93that the painter succumbed to being meager to avoid excess.\'94 Now if Pliny understood what he himself wrote, then one must assume that he did not want to contradict himself, and so this judgment must be compared and made to agree with that in which, just before, he had credited Parrhasius with some distinction in drawing outermost lines, that is in making outlines. The actual words of Pliny are: \'93When works of Parrhasius are compared with each other, then he seems to place himself below his own capacity, in his depiction of the middle part of the body.\'94 It is not clear however what is meant by \'93middle part of the body.\'94 It could be understood to apply to those parts of the body that are included within the outermost outline. But a draftsman should know his body from all sides and in all its movements. He must know how to draw it not only from the front but also from the side and from all points of view, and that which at first seemed to be included within the outline will prove in this case to be the outline itself. It cannot be said that for a draftsman there are middle parts of the body (I am not referring here to the middle of the stomach.). Every muscle has its own outermost outline. And the concept of a draftsman who keeps firmly to the outermost outline but not to the outline of those parts that are included within the outermost one is one that cannot be imagined either in itself or with reference to any draftsman. It cannot be a question of an outline on which being meager or excessive depends. Perhaps Parrhasius did not understand light and shade and did not lend the parts of his outlines their appropriate height and depth. Possibly that is what Pliny understood by the expression \'93middle part of the body\'94 or \'93the middle parts of it.\'94 And this may be the only explanation possible for Pliny\'92s words. Or did the same thing happen to this painter as happened to the famous La Fage,12 who may be considered a great draftsman? It is said that as soon as he had grasped hold of his palette and was about to paint, he spoiled his own drawing. The word \'93less\'94 in Pliny does not therefore refer to the outline. It seems to me that one further merit of the paintings of Parrhasius, besides the qualities attributed to them by the\
explanation above, may, according to the words of Pliny, also have been that the outlines had been painted out and dispelled in the background. This is not the case in most of the surviving paintings of the ancients and in the works of more recent masters at the beginning of the sixteenth century, in which the outlines of the figures are sharply distinguished from the ground. The painted-out outlines did not, however, lend the figures of Parrhasius any real prominence and roundness, as their parts were not suitably raised and deepened. And in this respect he was considered to be below his own capacity. If Parrhasius was the greatest at making outlines, then he was equally unable to be either meager or excessive.\
Concerning Zeuxis\'92s female figures, which he had made strong in accordance with Homer\'92s conception of them, it cannot be deduced from this, as was done in the Open Letter, that he made them strong in the way Rubens did, that is, made them too fleshy. One is led to believe that a Spartan woman, by virtue of her upbringing, had a figure of a somewhat youthful masculine nature, and nevertheless they were, as admitted by everyone in antiquity, the greatest beauties in Greece. Thus one must imagine the build of Helen to be like that of a Spartan woman as described by Theocritus.\
I doubt therefore whether Jacob Jordaens, who was defended with such enthusiasm in the Open Letter, would find his equal among the Greek painters. I am always willing to give my judgment on this great colorist. The author of the so-called Abridged Lives of the Painters collected judgments on them diligently, but they do not bear witness in every case to a great insight into art, and many are referred to in so many different contexts that a judgment could be applied to more than one artist in particular.\
As a result of the free access that Your Royal Majesty of Poland has granted to all artists and art enthusiasts, seeing things with one\'92s own eyes can teach us more and is more convincing than the judgment of a writer: I refer to the Presentation in the Temple and the Diogenes by the artist in question. But this judgment of Jordaens also requires an explanation, at least in respect of its truth. The general concept of truth should also be evident in works of art, and according to it the judgment is puzzling. The only possible meaning of it might be the following.\
Because of the inexhaustible prolific quality of his mind Rubens was as creative as Homer. He is abundant to the point of extravagance. He sought out the miraculous as the poet did, both generally, as a poetic and ordinary painter does, and with a special concern for composition and light and shade. He positioned his figures so that the highlights were distributed in a way unknown before him, and these highlights, which are concentrated on the main body of the work, are bound together more strongly than in nature, to infuse his works thus with spirit and to lend them an unusual quality. Jordaens, who belongs to the category of lesser intellects, cannot be compared with his master, Rubens, with respect to\
the sublime aspects of art. He was not able to reach the heights of the latter and could not go beyond nature. He thus followed it more closely, and if more truth is acquired in that way, then Jordaens might be said to have greater truth than Rubens. He painted nature as he found it.\
If the taste of the ancients is not to serve as the rule for artists in respect to form and beauty, then none should be observed at all. One would lend to his Venus a certain French character, as a well-known modern painter has done. Another would give her a hooked nose, and it is really the case that someone believed the nose of the Venus de\'92 Medici should have that form. And yet another would draw her with pointed and spindly fingers, according to the concept of some exponents of beauty described by Lucian. She would look at us with Chinese eyes, like all the beauties by one of the modern Italian schools. Indeed, one would be able to guess the homeland of the artist from every figure without the need to have read widely. According to Democritus\'92s opinion we should ask the gods to ensure that we are presented only with successful images, and such are the images of the ancients.\
An exception to the principle of imitation of the ancients in their outlines of fully developed bodies can be allowed, if it is wished, among our modern painters, in the case of II Fiammingo\'92s children. The concept of beautiful form cannot be applied to young children. We say that a child is beautiful and healthy. But the expression form implies maturity of some years. The children of II Fiammingo have now become almost like a sensible fashion, or like a prevailing taste, which our artists follow appropriately. And the Academy in Vienna, which allows an ancient Cupid to be set against casts by II Fiammingo, has by this, it seems to me, not made it possible to decide whether the works of modern artists representing children are superior to the works of the ancients. But this is what the author of the Open Letter wants to conclude from the report mentioned. The Academy, in its leniency concerning this matter, has nevertheless kept to its sound way of teaching and to its instruction to imitate the ancients. The artist who reported this matter to the author, is, as far as I know, of my opinion. The only difference is this: the ancient artists also went beyond what is normal in nature in the representation of their children, and the modern ones followed them. Even if the abundant forms that the latter lend their children are not influenced by concepts of a youthful body and a mature age, their nature can still be beautiful in that way. But the way of the ancients is not imperfect for that reason.\
Our artists have adopted a similar freedom in the hair styles of their figures, which can hold its own against all imitation of the ancients. But if one wants to follow nature, then the front strands of hair should fall down freely over the forehead, as can be seen on people of all ages who do not fritter away their lives between the comb and the mirror. Consequently, we can learn from the way the hair lies on statues made by the ancients\
that the latter always sought what was simple and true, though there was no lack of people among them too who got more enjoyment from using their mirror than their reason, and who understood as much about the symmetry of their hair as the most delicate creature in our courts. Wearing one\'92s hair like the heads and statues of the Greeks was also a sign of free and noble birth.\
The imitation of the outlines of the ancients has meanwhile never been rejected even by those who have not been most successful at doing it, but concerning the imitation of noble simplicity or calm greatness opinions are divided. This expression has seldom found general approval, and in attempting it artists have always taken great risks. Thus such true greatness in the Hercules by Bandinelli13 in Florence was regarded as an error. And concerning Raphael\'92s Murder of the Innocents, many have said that the faces of the murderers should be wilder and more terrible.\
According to the general concept of \'93nature at rest,\'94 the figures could perhaps be made similar to Xenephon\'92s young Spartans, which the author of the Open Letter also considers to follow the principle of \'93calm greatness.\'94 I also know that most people, even if the way of understanding my work was generally fixed and agreed upon, would nevertheless look at a painting made according to this taste of the ancients in the same way one would read a speech given before the Areopagites. However, the taste of the masses can never determine the rules of art. Concerning the concept of \'93nature at rest,\'94 von Hagedorn14 is perfectly correct in his work, which was composed with much wisdom and insight into the finest aspects of art, when he requires there to be more spirit and movement in great works. But this doctrine always requires considerable limitations: there should never be so much spirit that an Eternal Father resembles an avenging Mars and a saint in ecstasy resembles a Bacchante.\
In the eyes of someone who is unfamiliar with the character of the higher forms of art, a Madonna by Trevisano will seem superior to a Madonna by Raphael. I know that artists themselves have judged the Madonna by the former to come off somewhat better when placed next to the royal Raphael. So it did not seem to be pointless to reveal to many the true greatness of the rarest of all the works in the Dresden Gallery, and to enable those who see it to value it more highly as what is at present the only undamaged treasure by the hand of this Apollo among painters to be found in Germany.\
It must be admitted that the royal Raphael is in its composition not equal to his Transfiguration. On the other hand the former work has one merit which the latter work does not have. Giulio Romano probably took as great a part in the complete execution of the Transfiguration as the great master himself, and all the experts confirm that it is possible to distinguish clearly the two hands that worked on it. In the former work, however, experts can find the true original characteristics of the period of\
the master when he was working on the School of Athens in the Vatican. In this context I will not even refer to Vasari.\
A supposed judge of art who finds the child in the arms of the Madonna so awful cannot be enlightened so easily. As an old philosopher says, Pythagoras sees the sun with different eyes than Anaxagoras; the former sees it as a god, the latter as a stone. This novice may well be an Anaxagoras; experts will be on the side of Pythagoras. Experience alone, without observing the lofty expressions in the faces by Raphael, can discover truth and beauty and teach us about it. A beautiful face pleases us, but it will attract us more if it has some element of seriousness about it conveyed by a certain melancholy air. Antiquity seems to have judged the matter in the same way: their artists gave all the heads of Antinous the same air. It is not the forehead covered by the front curls that lend him this air. It is also known that what pleases at first glance often ceases to please afterwards. That which the passing glance was able to gather is dispelled by a more attentive eye, and the effect disappears. All attractive qualities are made to last by investigating and reflecting on them, and one attempts to gain deeper insight into hidden charms. A serious beauty will never leave us feeling completely satisfied and content: one constantly believes that one will discover new charms. And thus the beautiful figures by Raphael and the ancient masters are made in such a way: not playful and pleasing but well-built and filled with a true and original beauty. Cleopatra has become famous throughout history for charms of this sort. No one was amazed by her face, but her character had a lasting effect on all who saw her, and she was able to make a conquest whenever she wanted without meeting resistance. What someone said of the wit of Seneca would also be true of a French Venus at her bedside table: much would be lost, perhaps everything, if you attempted to analyze it.\
The comparison I made in my work between Raphael and several great Dutch and modern Italian masters concerns only the manner of dealing with something artistically. I believe that the judgment on the laborious diligence in the works of the first is made more certain by the fact that it should have been concealed. For it is this that required the painter to make the greatest effort. The most difficult thing in all works of art is to make that which has been worked hard on not appear to be worked hard on. The paintings of Nicomachus had this merit.\
Van der Werff will always be a great artist, and his works quite rightly adorn the cabinets of the world\'92s great men. He strove to make everything appear to be from one mold: all his strokes seem as though they have just melted, and in the exaggerated softness of his tints there is, so to speak, only one tone. His work could therefore be described as enameled rather than painted.\
However, his paintings do provide pleasure. But can what is pleasing be the main characteristic of painting? Old heads by Denner15 also\
give pleasure, but how would the wise ancients have judged the matter? Plutarch would say through the mouths of an Aristides or a Zeuxis: \'93Bad painters who cannot attain beauty due to their own weakness seek it in warts and wrinkles.\'94 There is a confirmed story that the Emperor Karl VI regarded the first head by Denner that he saw very highly and admired his diligent way of painting in oil. The master was asked to paint another similar head, and he was paid several hundred guilders for the two. The emperor, who was an expert in art, compared them both with heads by van Dyck and Rembrandt, and is reported as saying that \'93he had two works by this painter, so that he had something by him, but he did not want any more, even if they were given him as a gift.\'94 An Englishman of some standing gave a similar judgment when heads by Denner were praised to him: \'93Do you think,\'94 he replied, \'93that our nation values works of art in which only diligence has played a part, and intelligence has not played even the most insignificant role?\'94\
This judgment on Denner\'92s work follows immediately after Van der Werff, not because I am inclined to make a comparison between both masters, for he comes nowhere near the accomplishments of Van der Werff, but only to show through the example of the former\'92s work that a painting that gives pleasure has just as little general merit as a poem that gives pleasure, as the author of the Open Letter seems to be asserting.\
It is not sufficient that a painting should give pleasure: it must give pleasure constantly. But that very quality by which the painter wanted to give pleasure makes us indifferent to his work after a very short time. He seems to have worked only for the sense of smell, for one has to bring his work as close to the face as flowers. It is judged as one judges a valuable stone, the value of which is reduced when one notices the slightest blemish.\
The greatest concern of these masters was therefore only for the strict imitation of the smallest detail in nature. They were afraid of laying the smallest hair differently than they found it, in order to present the most imperceptible aspects of nature to the sharpest eye, or even, if it had been possible, to magnifying glasses. They are to be regarded as students of Anaxagoras, who believed that the basis of human wisdom was to be found in the hand. As soon as this form of art attempts to achieve more, and endeavors to draw the larger proportions of the body and especially to depict the nude, then it immediately becomes obvious\
Infelix operis summa, quia ponere to turn Nescit.\
(Horace)16\
The art of drawing remains for a painter what actions are for Demosthenes\'92s orator: the first, second, and third thing.\
I must agree with what the Open Letter finds fault with in the relief works of the ancients, and my judgment can be found in my work. The\
poor knowledge of the ancients about perspective, which I included there, is the reason for the reproach that can be made to the ancients with regard to this aspect of art. I am reserving this for an extensive treatment of the subject.\
The fourth point concerns primarily allegory.\
In painting fable is generally known as allegory. And as the art of poetry, no less than painting, has imitation as its goal, so no poem can be made without the use of fable. And a historical painting can, through the use of mere imitation alone, be only an ordinary picture. It can be regarded without consideration for allegory, in the same way as Davenant\'92s so-called heroic poem Gondibert, in which all invention is avoided.17\
Coloring and drawing are probably to a painting what meter and truth or plot are to a poem. The body is present but it lacks a soul. Homer was the first to imbue poetry with invention, the soul of poetry, as Aristotle calls it, and the painter, too, must enliven his work by this means. Drawing and coloring can be achieved by constant practice. Perspective and composition, whereby the latter is to be understood in its true meaning, are based on firmly established rules. Consequently, all this is mechanical, and it only requires, if I may so express myself, mechanical souls to recognize and admire works made by such art.\
All delightful things, including those that rob the greater part of humanity of a treasure of which they are unaware, that is of Time, become permanent and protect us from revulsion and surfeit by the degree to which they occupy our understanding. Mere sensory experiences, however, only affect out skin and have little effect on our understanding. Looking at landscapes and at fruit and flower works provides us with pleasure of this kind. The expert who looks at it does not need to think any more than the master. And an enthusiast or an ignorant person does not need to think at all.\
A historical painting, which represents persons and things as they are or as they happen, can be distinguished from landscapes merely by the expression of the emotions in the persons involved in the action. What is more, both types of painting are accomplished according to one rule and are essentially the same: that is to say imitation.\
It does not appear contradictory to say that painting could have as broad limits as the art of poetry, and that consequently it is possible for the painter to follow the poet, as music is able to do. Now history is the highest model a painter can choose, but mere imitation will not elevate it to the level of a tragedy or a heroic poem, the highest accomplishment of the art of poetry. Cicero said that Homer made men into gods. That means that he not only heightened the truth but also, in order to create sublime poetry, preferred to choose what was impossible but probable rather than what was merely possible. And Aristotle posits this as the\
essence of poetry, and informs us that the paintings of Zeuxis had this quality. Possibility and truth, which Longinus requires of the painter by contrast with the unbelievable, which he requires of the poet, can therefore coexist with the latter.\
A painter of historical subjects cannot endow his works with this high quality by providing an outline that is superior to ordinary nature, nor through a noble expression of the emotions. This can be expected from a wise portrait painter, who can maintain both without detriment to any resemblance to the person whom he is representing. Both are still involved in imitation, but it is being done wisely. The close observation of nature in heads by van Dyck is regarded as a small imperfection, and in all historical painters it would be regarded as a mistake.\
Truth, as much as it is worth loving for its own sake, gives pleasure and makes a stronger impression if it is clothed in a fable. What a fable, in its narrowest sense, is for children is what allegory is for those of mature age. And in this form truth has been more acceptable in the most uncivilized times, also according to the very old opinion that poetry is older than prose, which is confirmed by the reports from the most ancient periods of various peoples.\
Our understanding has the bad habit of paying attention only to what is not revealed at first glance and carelessly passing over what is as clear as daylight. Images of the latter kind therefore often leave only a momentary trace in the memory, like a ship in the water. For this very reason and no other the ideas from our childhood last longer, because we regarded everything that happened to us as extraordinary. Nature itself therefore teaches us that it is not moved by ordinary things. Art should imitate nature in this respect, says the author of books on rhetoric, and it should invent what the latter requires of it.\
An idea becomes stronger if it is accompanied by one or more ideas, as in comparisons, and it becomes that much stronger the more distant the relationship of the latter to the former, for in cases in which the similarity is obvious, as in the comparison of a white skin with snow, there is no astonishment. The opposite case is that of what we call wit, and which Aristotle calls unexpected ideas. He required an orator to use just such expressions. The more unexpected things one discovers in a painting, the more moving it will be, and it acquires both through allegory. It is like a fruit hidden under leaves and twigs, which is the more pleasant for being found unexpectedly. The smallest painting can be the greatest masterpiece if its idea is sublime.\
Necessity taught artists to use allegory. In the beginning they were of course happy to represent individual examples of one kind of thing, but with time they attempted to express that which was common to many individual things, that is, general ideas. Every quality of an individual thing provides such an idea, and making it apparent to the senses\
separately from that which it refers to had to be done by an image that, although it was an individual thing, applied not just to one individual thing but to many at the same time.\
The Egyptians were the first who sought such images, and their hieroglyphs belong to the category of allegory. Ail the divinities of antiquity, especially those of the Greeks, and even their names, came from Egypt. The history of the gods is nothing but allegory and the greater part of it, as we know it, is made up of this.\
Those who invented such images provided many things, especially their divinities, with certain symbols, which were in part retained by the Greeks. The meanings of these can so rarely be found with the help of the works of authors we have managed to keep that it seems as though the latter considered it rather to be a sin against the godhead to reveal it, as was the case with the Juno of Samos with a pomegranate in her hand. It was considered more wicked than stealing from a church to speak of the secrets of the Eleusinian Ceres.\
The relationship between the symbol and what was symbolized was based on partly unknown or unproven characteristics of the former. This was the case with the dung beetle as an image of the sun among the Egyptians. The insect was intended to represent it because it was believed that there was no female in its species and that it spent six months in the earth and the same length of time above it. For the same reason a cat was used as an image for Isis or the moon, because it had been observed that it gave birth to as many kittens as there were days in one cycle of the moon.\
The Greeks, who had greater intelligence and certainly better sensory perception, took over only those symbols that had a real relationship with that which they symbolized, and above all those that could be perceived through the senses. They gave all of their gods human forms. Among the Egyptians, wings signified the performance of fast and effective duties. This image is in accordance with nature. Among the Greeks, wings represented the same thing, and if the Athenians did not give their Victoria the usual wings, it was because they wanted to represent the idea that she rested peacefully in their city. A goose signified there a cautious regent, and with reference to this they gave the front parts of their ships the form of a goose. The Greeks retained this image, and the prows of the ships among the ancients end in a goose\'92s neck.\
The sphinx is perhaps the only one of those figures having no clear relationship to their meaning that the Greeks took over from the Egyptians. To the former it signified almost the same thing as it was intended to signify to the latter when it stood in front of the entrance of their temples. The Greeks gave their figures wings, and mostly left the head free without a stola. A sphinx is represented thus on an Athenian coin.\
It was generally a special quality of the Greek nation that all their works were characterized by a certain open nature, with a quality of joy. The muses do not like frightening ghosts. And whenever Homer himself puts Egyptian allegories into the mouth of his gods, then it is on the whole done with a reservation, such as \'93It is said that ...\'94 And indeed when the poet Pampho, before Homer\'92s time, describes how his Jupiter is mired in horse manure, it is true that it sounds more Egyptian, but it is much closer to the higher idea of the English poet:\
As full, as perfect in a hair as heart,\
As full, as perfect in vile Man that mourns,\
As the rapt Seraph that adores and burns.\
(Pope)18\
An image, such as that of a snake that has wrapped itself around an egg, on a Tyrian coin of the third century, would be hard to find on a Greek coin. There is no representation of anything frightening on any of their memorials. They avoided such things even more than certain so-called unlucky words. Probably the only image of Death is on one old stone, but in a form that they used to present at their banquets; that is, to encourage people to enjoy life\'92s pleasures by reminding them of the shortness of life: the artist made Death dance to a flute. On another stone with a Roman inscription there is a skeleton representing Death with two butterflies as images of the soul, one of which is being caught by a bird, which indicates the transmigration of souls. But the work is from a later period.\
It has also been noticed that while all gods have consecrated altars, there was no altar of Death among the Greeks and Romans except on the most remote coasts of the known world.\
The Romans in their best period thought like the Greeks, and whenever they adopted a foreign country\'92s language of images, then they followed the principles of their predecessors and teachers. An elephant was included among the secret signs of the Egyptians in later times (for on the oldest extant memorials of this nation no images of this animal, nor of a deer, an ostrich, or a rooster, are to be found). It had various meanings, and probably one of them was eternity, and the elephant on some Roman coins is to be understood in this sense because of its long life. On one of the Emperor Antoninus\'92s coins this animal has the word \'93Munificentia\'94 above it as a title, and in this case it can refer only to the great games during which elephants were also displayed.\
But I have as little intention of examining the origins of all the allegorical images among the Greeks and Romans as I have of constructing an edifice providing instructions on allegory. I am only trying to justify my work with respect to this point, with this reservation, that the images in which the Greeks and Romans couched their ideas should be the object\
of study by artists, rather than all the images of other peoples, or the ill-conceived thoughts of some modern ones.\
Just a few images can serve as examples of how the Greek and good Roman artists thought, and how it is possible to represent completely unrelated ideas to the senses. Many images on their coins, stones, and other memorials have specific and accepted meanings, and some of the most remarkable ones, which generally do not yet have such meanings, deserve to have them.\
It is possible to consider the allegorical images of the ancients as being of two kinds, and one can posit a higher kind of allegory and a common kind, in the same way that this distinction can be made in painting. Images of the first kind are those in which can be found some secret significance in relation to the history of fable or to ancient wisdom about the world. Among these could also be included some that are drawn from little known or mysterious customs of antiquity.\
Among the second kind are images with a better known meaning, such as individually adopted virtues and vices, and so on.\
Images of the first kind lend works of art true epic greatness. A single figure can do this. The more ideas it incorporates, the more highly it can be regarded, and the more it encourages us to think, the deeper the impression it makes, and thus the greater its effect on the senses.\
Among the ancients the representation of a child dying in the bloom of its youth is such a figure. They painted a child carried off in the arms of Aurora. This is a happily chosen image, presumably derived from the habit of burying the corpses of young people at the break of dawn. The way of thinking about such things among artists of standing nowadays is well enough known.\
The revival of the body by animating it with the soul, one of the most abstract concepts, was depicted by the ancients through the most charming images in ways that were both perceptible to the senses and poetic. An artist who is not familiar with his masters would indeed believe that he could suggest the Creation by the actual representation of it. But in everybody\'92s eyes this image would represent nothing but the actual Creation itself. This story would seem, however, to be too holy to embody what is merely a human philosophical concept and to allow the application of the latter in unconsecrated places, not to mention that it is not poetic enough for art. Embodied in images by the oldest wise men and poets, this concept appears partly on coins and partly on stones. Prometheus is shown making a human being out of the very clay that was still evident as great petrified lumps in the landscape of Phocis at the time of Pausanias. And Minerva is holding a butterfly as an image of the soul over its head. The coin of Antoninus Pius that has been mentioned, and on which there is a tree behind Minerva with a snake wound around it, is considered to be a symbol of the cleverness and wisdom of the prince.\
It cannot be denied that the meanings of many allegorical images of the ancients are based on mere conjectures, which cannot therefore be generally employed by our artists. The figure on a carved stone of a child who is about to place a butterfly on an altar has been interpreted as representing the concept of friendship as far as the altar, that is to say friendship that does not exceed righteousness. On another stone Love, who is striving to pull toward itself the branch of an old tree, an established image of wisdom, on which a so-called nightingale is sitting, is said to represent the love of wisdom. Among the ancients Eros, Himeros, and Pothos were images used to indicated Love, Appetite, and Desire. These three figures are said to be evident on a carved stone. They are standing around an altar, on which a holy fire is burning. Love is standing behind it, so that only its head stands out, with Appetite and Desire on either side. The former has only one hand in the fire and a garland in the other, while the latter has both hands in the fire.\
On a coin of King Seleucus, a Victory, placing a crown on an anchor, was formerly regarded as an image of the peace and security that victory provides, until the true explanation was found. Seleucus is said to have been born with a birthmark in the form of an anchor, which sign not only this king but also the Seleucidae, his descendants, had struck on their coins as an indication of their origin.\
More likely is the explanation given of a Victory with the wings of a butterfly fixed onto a symbol of victory. It is believed that it represents a hero who died as a conqueror, like Epaminondas. In Athens there was a statue and an altar to Victoria without wings, as an image of immutable good fortune in war. The image of victory fixed to it would in this case permit a similar interpretation, and it can be compared to the similarly fixed Mars in Sparta. The type of wings given to Psyche were presumably not given to her arbitrarily, as eagle\'92s wings are usually attributed to her. Perhaps they have the hidden meaning of the soul of the dead hero. The conjectures are acceptable if the Victoria fixed onto trophies made of weapons of conquered peoples can be identified with a conqueror of these people.\
To be sure, the higher form of allegory among the ancients has come down to us without examples of the most valuable kind. There is a lack in respect to the second type, which frequently have more than a single image to express one thing. Two different images can be found on coins of the Emperor Commodus, to express the happiness of the times. One is a woman sitting under a green tree with an apple or sphere in her right hand and a dish in her left hand. In front of her are three children, two of whom are in a vase or a flowerpot, as a common symbol of fertility. The other one consists of four children, who represent the seasons by the things they are carrying. And the title at the bottom of both coins is \'93The Happiness of the Times.\'94\
This and all other images that require some script to explain them are of a lower standard of their kind. Without it some of them could be taken for other images. Hope and fertility could be a Ceres, and Nobility could be a Minerva. The Patience on a coin of Emperor Aurelian is also lacking in its true distinguishing marks, as is the muse Erato. And the Parcae are distinguished from the Graces only by their clothing. On the other hand other concepts, such as Justice and Fairness, which have indistinguishable borderlines in morality, were distinguished very clearly by the ancients. The former is represented with tied-up hair and a diadem and with a serious expression, as Gellius painted it, while the latter is represented with a lovely face and flying hair. From the scales held by the latter ears of corn are rising, which have been interpreted as meaning the advantages of fairness. Sometimes she holds a horn of plenty in the other hand.\
Among those that have a stronger expression can be considered the Peace on a coin of the Emperor Titus. The goddess of peace supports herself with her left arm on a column, and in that hand she holds a branch from an olive tree. In the other she holds Mercury\'92s staff over the thigh of a sacrificial animal that is lying on a small altar. This host signifies the bloodless sacrifice of the goddess of peace. It was slaughtered outside the temple, and only the thighs were brought to the altar, so as not to stain it with blood.\
Usually Peace is seen with an olive branch and Mercury\'92s staff, as on a coin of the emperor just mentioned. Or she is seen on a chair that is standing on a pile of cast-off weapons, as on a coin of Drusus. On some of the coins of Tiberius and Vespasian Peace burns the weapons.\
There is a noble image on a coin of the emperor Philippus: a sleeping Victory. She can more justifiably be interpreted as signifying a confident and certain victory than the security of the world, which according to the caption she is intended to represent. A similar idea is contained in that painting, with which it was intended to reproach the Athenian commander Timotheus of gaining his victories by pure luck. He was painted asleep, with Luck catching cities in her net.\
The Nile with its sixteen children in the Belvedere in Rome belongs in this class. The child who is standing at the same height as the ears of corn and the fruits in the Horn of the Nile signifies the greatest fruitfulness. But those children who have risen up higher than the horn and its fruit signify crop failure. Pliny provides us with an explanation of this. Egypt is at its most fruitful when the Nile rises sixteen feet, but if it exceeds this height, then it is of just as little benefit to the land as when the river does not reach the desired height. In Rossi\'92s collection the children have been left out.\
Available examples of allegorical satyrs are of this second kind. One example is provided by the ass in the fable of Gabrias,19 which has been loaded with a statue of Isis and interprets the reverence of the people\
for the image as being for itself Can the pride of the common people among the world\'92s great men be represented in a way more impressive to the senses?\
The higher form of allegory could be replaced by the more common kind, if the latter had not had the same fate as the former. We do not know, for example, how Eloquence or the goddess Peitho were represented, or how Praxiteles represented the goddess of consolation, Paregoros, which Pausanias informs us about. The Romans also had an altar for Oblivion. Perhaps this concept was also given a personal touch. This may also have been the intention with Modesty, an altar to whom can be found on coins, and the same may have been true for Fear, to which Theseus made sacrifices.\
Meanwhile, the remaining allegories have not yet been all been used up by more modern artists. A few of them here and there have remained unknown to many of these artists. And the poets and the other memorials from antiquity can still provide rich material for beautiful images. Those who, in our own times and in our fathers\'92 times, wanted to enrich this field and to work no less for the instruction of the artists than to make their tasks easier should have sought out such pure and abundant sources. But there came about a time in the world when a large number of learned men became enraged with a real frenzy to eradicate good taste. In that which one could call natural they found nothing but childish simplicity, and they felt obliged to endow it with more intelligence. Both young and old began to paint mottos and symbols, not only for artists but also for the wise men of the world and for theologians, and furthermore hardly a greeting could be passed on without adding an emblem to it. Attempts were made to make them more instructive by providing captions indicating what they meant and what they did not mean. Such are the treasures that people dig for nowadays. As soon as this kind of erudition had become fashionable, no more thought was given to the allegory of the ancients.\
The image for Generosity among the ancients was a female figure with a horn of plenty in one hand and the tag of a Roman congiarium. Roman generosity seemed perhaps to be too thrifty, so in their own versions they gave her a horn in each hand, one of them turned over, in order to scatter the contents. On her head they put an eagle, and I have no idea what it was supposed to signify. Others painted a figure with a vessel in each hand.\
Among the ancients Eternity sat on a ball, or rather a sphere, with a spear in her hand, or she stood with the ball in one hand, but otherwise the same as the former. Or she had a ball in one hand and was without a spear. And she also appeared with a veil flying from her head. In such various forms Eternity is to be found on coins of the Empress Faustina. For modern allegorists this seemed to be too simply conceived. So they\
painted for us something that is terrifying, as eternity does seem to many: a female figure down to the breasts, with balls in each hand; the rest of the body is a snake turning back on itself and has marks in the form of stars.\
The figure of Caution often has a ball at her feet and a spear in her left hand. On a coin of the Emperor Pertinax Caution holds her hands outstretched toward a ball that appears to be falling from the clouds. A female figure with two faces appeared to have greater significance for modern artists.\
On some coins of the Emperor Claudius Constancy can be seen sitting and standing with a helmet on her head and a spear in her left hand, but also without a helmet or spear, but always with her forefinger pointed at her face, as though she were about to say something in a serious way. For modern artists the representation of this virtue without columns has not seemed to be real enough.\
It seems that Ripa often did not understand how to explain his own figures. His image of Modesty holds a scourge in one hand (which provides little encouragement to virtue) and a sieve in the other. The inventor of this image, from whom Ripa borrowed it, presumably wanted to allude to the vestal virgin Tuccia. Ripa, who was unaware of this, comes out with the most contrived ideas, which do not deserve to be repeated.\
By drawing this contrast I do not deny our times the right to invent allegorical images. But from the differences in the way of thinking some rules can be deduced for those who wish to tread this path.\
The ancient Greeks and Romans never diverged from the quality of noble simplicity. The true opposite of this can be seen in the symbolic language of Romeyn de Hooghe. What Virgil said of the elm tree in hell can be said of many of his ideas:\
Hanc sedem somnia vulgo\
Vana tenere ferunt, foliisque sub omnibus haerent\
(.Aeneid 6)20\
The ancients lent their images clarity mainly through such signs given to them, which were characteristic of that and of no other thing (with the exception of a few that have been referred to above), and implied in this rule is the avoidance of all ambiguity, which modern artists have not respected in their allegories, in which a deer can signify baptism, but also revenge, a gnawing conscience, and flattery. A cedar is said to be an image of a priest but at the same time earthly vanities, a scholar, and a woman dying after childbirth.\
Simplicity and clarity were always accompanied by a certain seemliness. A pig, which is said to have signified among the Egyptians someone who investigates mysteries, would, together with all the pigs included by\
Cesare Ripa and other modern artists, have been regarded by the Greeks as an improper image, except in circumstances in which this animal also served as the coat of arms of a place, as can be seen on Eleusinian coins.\
Finally, the ancients were concerned to establish a remote connection between the sign and what it signified. Apart from these rules the general observation concerning all attempts in this field of knowledge is appropriate: that where possible, images should be chosen from mythology and from the most ancient history.\
There are a few new allegories (if I can call something new that is completely in accordance with the taste of antiquity) that can perhaps be set alongside the images of the ancient higher form of allegory. Two brothers of the house of Barbarigo, who held the office of Doge in Venice in immediate succession to each other, have been represented by the images of Castor and Pollux. According to the old story, the latter shared with the former the immortality that was conferred by Jupiter on him alone. In the allegory Pollux, as the successor, hands to his dead predecessor, signified by a death\'92s head, a snake, which usually represents eternity. By this he is indicating that the dead brother is eternalized by the reign of the living man, that is by himself. On the reverse of an imaginary coin below the image described stands a tree from which a broken branch is falling down, with an inscription above it from the Aeneid:\
Primo avulso non deficit alter.21\
An image on one of the coins of Louis XIV also deserves to be noted here. It was struck when the Duke of Lorraine, who at one time took sides with the French and at another with the Austrians, had to retreat from his lands after the conquest of Marsal. The Duke is here represented as Proteus being overpowered through a cunning trick of Menelaus, who ties him up after he had taken on all possible guises. In the distance is the conquered fortress and on the caption below is the year of the event. It was not necessary to indicate the meaning of the allegory by the title above: Protei artes delusae.22\
A good example of the common kind of allegory is that of Patience or rather Longing, or Yearning, represented by the image of a female figure who with folded hands is looking at the time on a clock.\
Hitherto the inventors of the best allegories for painters have always drawn only from the sources of antiquity, because no one was granted the right to design images for artists, for they were not generally adopted by them. There was no hope of this happening with any of the attempts made so far. In the whole of Ripa\'92s Iconologia there are only two or three tolerable ones,\
Apparent rari nantes in gurgite vasto;23\
and wasted Effort represented by a Moor washing himself is probably the best. In some good writings images are hidden and scattered throughout, as with Stupidity and Temple in The Spectator.24 These should be collected and made generally known. It is a way to make weekly and monthly magazines popular among artists. An article on good allegorical images would have this effect. If the treasures of learning were made available to art, then a time might come when a painter could just as well depict an ode as a tragedy.\
I shall attempt to provide a few images myself, as rules and many examples provide the best instruction. I have found that everywhere Friendship is represented badly. Symbols for it do not even deserve to have a judgment passed on them. They are mostly identified by flying pennants with inscriptions on them, so it is obvious how deep such concepts are.\
I would represent in painting this greatest of human virtues by figures of two eternal friends from the heroic period, Theseus and Pirithous. On carved stones there are heads bearing the name of the first. On another stone, by the hand of Philemon, the hero appears with the club that he has taken from Periphetes, a son of Vulcan. To the experienced observer of antiquity Theseus can therefore be made recognizable. A painting at Delphos, as described by Pausanias, could serve as model for the design of an image of friendship in the greatest danger. Theseus was depicted with his own dagger in one hand and the dagger he had taken from his friend\'92s side in the other, preparing to defend them against the Thesprotians. Or the beginning and establishment of their friendship, as described by Plutarch, could also serve as a model for this image. I was surprised that among the symbols for worldly and spiritually great heroes and men from the house of Barbarigo there have been found none to a true man and eternal friend. Nicolo Barbarigo was such a person. He established a friendship with Marco Trivisano that would have deserved a permanent memorial:\
Monumentum aere perennius25\
They are remembered in a short and rare work.\
An image of Ambition could be provided by a small detail from antiquity. Plutarch mentions that sacrifice was made to Honor with one\'92s head uncovered. All other sacrifices, with the exception of those made to Saturn, took place with some covering on the head. The writer mentioned believes that the usual way for people to show their respect for each other was the occasion for this form of observance at such sacrifices. But the opposite could be true. This way of making a sacrifice could also originate from the Pelasgians, who used to make offerings with their heads uncovered. Honor is represented by a female figure crowned with laurel, carrying a horn of plenty in one hand and a hasta in the other. Accompanied by Virtue, which is a male figure wearing a helmet, she appears on a coin\
of Emperor Vitellius. The heads of both these virtues can be seen on a coin of Cordus and Calenus.\
An image of Prayer could be taken from Homer. Phoenix, the court tutor of Achilles, tries to soothe the hero entrusted to him, and he does so in an allegory. \'93As you well know,\'94 he says, \'93Prayers are the daughters of Jupiter. They have become crooked through so much kneeling. Their faces are full of cares and wrinkles, and their eyes are constantly turned towards heaven. They form the retinue of the goddess Ate, and follow behind her. This goddess goes on her way with a bold and proud expression, and being light of foot, she runs around the whole world and worries and torments human beings. She tries to evade the Prayers, which pursue her incessantly, to heal those people whom Ate has wounded. Whoever honors these daughters of Jupiter when they approach him enjoys much benefit from them, but if they are rejected, they ask their father to order the goddess Ate to punish such a person for his hardness of heart.\'9426 A new image could be made from a well-known old story. Salmacis and the boy whom she loved were changed into a spring, which had the capacity to endow femininity, so that\
Quisquis in hos fonts vir venerit, exeat inde Semivir: & tactis subito mollescat in undis.\
(Ovid, Metamorphoses L.4)27\
The spring was near Halicarnassus in Caria. Vitruvius believes that he has found the truth behind the invented story. He says that some inhabitants of Argos and Troezen went there and drove away the Carians and the Leleges, who saved themselves by escaping into the mountains and began to worry the Greeks by their plundering expeditions. One of the inhabitants, who discovered that this spring had special qualities, erected a building nearby, where those who wished to use the well could rest in comfort. Barbarians as well as Greeks gathered there, and the former got used to the gentle Greek customs and voluntarily put aside their wild nature. The idea in the story itself is well-known to artists. Vitruvius\'92s account could serve to instruct them to create an image of a people that had acquired good manners and become human, as the Russians have done under Peter I. The story of Orpheus could serve to express the same idea. Whether one image is given a deeper meaning than another depends on how it is expressed.\
If what I have said in general about allegory is not sufficiently convincing to demonstrate that it is necessary in painting, then at least the images I have cited as examples can serve to justify my statement \'93that painting can be extended to represent things that are not sensory.\'94\
The two greatest works of allegorical painting that I cited in my work, that is, the Luxemburg Gallery and the cupola of the Imperial Library in\
Vienna, can serve to show how the masters who made them employed allegory in a successful and poetic way.\
Rubens wanted to paint Henri IV as a humane conqueror who, in punishing the wicked rabble-rousers and the treacherous murderers who offended his majesty, reveals mildness and mercy. He gave his hero the character of Jupiter, distributing orders to the gods to punish and overthrow the Vices. Apollo and Minerva shoot their arrows at them, and the Vices, depicted as monsters, fall one on top of the other to the ground. Mars, overcome with rage, wants to destroy them completely, but Venus, as the image of Love, holds him back gently by the arm. The expression of the goddess is so forceful that it is as though one can hear her begging the God of War: Do not vent your fury in terrible vengeance against the Vices; they have been punished.\
The whole of Daniel Gran\'92s work on the cupola is an allegory on the Imperial Library, and all his figures are also branches from the same stem. It is a heroic poem in the form of a painting, which does not begin with Leda\'92s eggs, but in the same way as Homer primarily sings of the anger of Achilles, the artist\'92s brush lends immortality only to the emperor\'92s concern for the various branches of knowledge. In this way the artist represented the preparations for the building of the library.\
His Imperial Majesty appears beneath a seated female figure wearing a precious ornamental headpiece and on her breast a golden heart hanging on a chain, as an image of the beneficent heart of this emperor. With her staff of office this figure gives the order to start building. Below her sits a spirit with a T-square, palette, and iron tool, and another hovers above her with a picture of the three Graces, which indicate the good taste to be employed in the building. Next to the main figure there sits a figure signifying Generosity to all with a filled purse in its hand, and below it a spirit with the tag of a Roman congiarium. Behind it is a figure representing Austrian Generosity, with larks worked into her cloak. Several spirits catch the treasures and rewards pouring out of the horn of plenty, to distribute them to the men who have deserved them for their work on the library. The figure personifying Obedience to the order given turns her face toward the person who has given the order, and there are three children holding a model of the building. Next to this figure stands an old man, who is working out the measurements of the building on a board, and below him is a spirit with a plumb line, representing carrying out the instructions. By the side of the old man sits the figure of meaningful Invention, with the image of Isis in her right hand and a book in her left, to signify that nature and knowledge are the sources of invention, the difficult solutions of which are represented by the image of a sphinx lying in front of her.\
The comparison of this work with the great ceiling by Le Moine at Versailles, which I made in my work, was intended only to enable\
comparisons between the most modern and greatest works in our own time in Germany and France. The great gallery of the pleasure palace mentioned, which was painted by Carl le Brun, is without doubt the highest example of poetic painting that has been accomplished since Rubens, and France can boast of having in this case and in that of the Luxemburg Gallery the most erudite works of allegory in the world.\
In Le B run\'92s28 Gallery the history of Louis XIV from the Peace of the Pyrenees to the Peace of Nijmegen is represented in nine large and eighteen small panels. That painting alone in which the king is bringing the war against Holland to a conclusion contains a meaningful application, to a very high standard, of almost the whole mythological range, and was engraved by Simonneau the Elder.29 The riches of this work require a description that would become too substantial for a short work. What the artist was capable of thinking and expressing can be judged from a few of the smaller compositions among these paintings. He painted the famous crossing of the Rhine by the French people. His hero is sitting on a chariot with a thunderbolt in his hand, and Hercules, representing an image of heroic courage, is driving the vehicle through the choppy waves. The figure representing Spain is swept away by the river. The god of the Rhine is dismayed and drops his oar. Figures representing Victory fly to the scene, holding shields indicating the names of the towns that were conquered after this crossing. Europa looks on full of amazement.\
Another image relates to the peace settlement. Without giving thought to the fact that she is being held back by the imperial eagle holding her dress, Holland runs toward Peace, who is descending from Heaven, surrounded by the spirits of Jesting and Amusement, who scatter flowers everywhere. Vanity, who is crowned with peacock\'92s feathers, tries to restrain Spain and Germany from following this state that is in alliance with them. But when they see the cave where weapons are being forged for France and Holland and hear Fama in the air threatening them,30 they also turn toward Peace. The first of these two pictures can be rated as highly as Homer\'92s famous description of Neptune\'92s journey across the sea, and the leaping of his immortal horses.\
After such great examples there is, however, no lack of opponents to the use of allegory in painting, as it happened with Homer\'92s use of allegory in antiquity. There are people of such a tender conscience that they cannot bear to see a fable and truth put together. A single figure representing a river on a so-called holy project is capable of annoying them. Poussin was rebuked because in his composition representing Moses he made the Nile into a figure. A more powerful faction has declared itself to be against clarity in allegory. And concerning this aspect Le Brun has found unsympathetic judges and still finds them nowadays. But who can be unaware of the fact that time and circumstances are mostly responsible for bringing about clarity and its opposite. When Phidias first added a crab to his\
Venus, there were perhaps only a few who knew of the artist\'92s intention, and the artist who first put shackles on this goddess was taking a great risk. With time these signs became as well known as the figure to which they had been added. But allegory as a whole has, as Plato said in general about poetry, something enigmatic about it and is not suitable for everyone. If an artist were to allow himself to be directed by the concern that he might be unclear to those who look at a painting as the masses do, then he would have to smother all exceptional and strange ideas. When the famous Federico Barocci, in his The Martyrdom of Saint Vitalis, included a cherry held by a young girl over a woodpecker, which is snatching at it, his intention must have been a mystery to a great many people. The cherry signified the season in which the saint had yielded up his spirit.\
All great schematic designs and works for a public building, palace, etc., require suitable allegorical paintings. That which is large has a particular requirement: an elegy is not suitable for celebrating in song the great events of the world. But can every story be given an allegory to suit its location? It has less right to this than the Doge has to expect to represent on the mainland what his role is in Venice. If my judgment is correct, then the Farnese gallery cannot be considered an allegorical work. Perhaps I was too critical of Annibale in that context in my work, if it was not his choice. It is known that the Duke of Orleans wanted Coypel31 to paint the story of Aeneas in his gallery.\
The Neptune by Rubens in the Royal Gallery in Dresden was originally made for the magnificent entry of the Infante, Ferdinand of Spain, into Antwerp as Governor of the Netherlands. There it was an allegorical painting on a gate of honor. The God of the Sea, who in Virgil bids the winds be still, was an image for the artist of a safe journey after enduring a storm and the landing of the prince in Genua. But now it can represent nothing but Virgil\'92s Neptune.\
Vasari was judging according to the same well-known and accepted purpose of paintings in specific locations, such as those I have named, when he attempted to discover an allegory in the famous painting by Raphael in the Vatican that is known by the name The School of Athens. He compared knowledge of the world and astrology with theology, though nothing more should be seen in it than what is evident to the eyes, which is to say, a representation of the Academy in Athens.\
In antiquity, on the other hand, every representation of the story of a divinity in a temple dedicated to it was also to be regarded at the same time as an allegorical painting, because the whole of mythology was a fabric woven out of allegory. One of the ancients said that Homer\'92s gods are natural expressions of the various forces in the world, shadows and outward forms of sentiments. In just such a way they regarded the love affair between Jupiter and Juno on a ceiling in a temple to this goddess in Samos. Jupiter represented the air and Juno the earth.\
Finally I must explain what I mean about the representation of the contradictions in the inclinations of the Athenian people, in a work by the hand of Parrhasius. First I want to recognize a mistake I made in my work: instead of this painter, Aristides, who was generally known as the painter of the soul, is mentioned in the work. In the Open Letter the painting in question was understood in a very facile and convenient way: for the sake of greater clarity it was divided into several different paintings. The artist definitely did not think in that way, for even a sculptor, Leochares, made a statue representing the Athenian people. There was also a temple of this name, and the paintings there, for which the people of Athens served as model, seemed to have been carried out in the same way as the work by Parrhasius. No one has been able to draw up a probable scheme of composition for it, or else in attempting to do so in terms of allegory have done it in a dreadful form, like the one Tesoro has painted for us. The painting by Parrhasius will always provide proof for us that the ancients were more learned than us in the use of allegory.\
My explanation of allegory in general incorporates at the same time what I could say about the use of allegory in ornamentation. But as the author of the Open Letter produced specific objections concerning this, then I must at least touch upon it.\
For all forms of ornamentation there are two primary rules: first, they should be suitable for the nature of the subject matter and for the location; and second, they should not be devised by arbitrary use of the imagination.\
The first rule, which is laid down for all artists in general and requires them to group things together so that each item is in some relationship to the others, also requires in this context an exact correspondence between what is being decorated and the ornaments used.\
Non ut placidis coeant immitia (Horace)32\
What is unholy should not be placed next to what is holy nor what is horrible next to what is sublime. For this very reason the sheep\'92s heads in the metopes of the Doric columns of the chapel of the Luxembourg palace in Paris have been rejected.\
The second rule excludes a certain freedom and restricts the architect and maker of ornaments within much narrower bounds than even the painter. The latter must even adapt himself sometimes to fashion in his historical works, and it would go against all reason if he always tried to transport himself in his imagination to Greece. But buildings and public constructions, which are intended to last a long time, require ornaments that will last for longer periods than items of clothing, that is, either ones that have been highly regarded over many centuries and will continue to\
be so, or ones that have been made according to the rules of the taste of antiquity. Otherwise it will come about that the ornaments will become obsolete and fall out of fashion before the artifice to which they are applied is completed.\
The first rule leads the artist to allegory, and the second to imitation of antiquity. The latter concerns primarily smaller ornaments.\
By smaller ornaments I mean those of which some do not make up one whole and some are additions to larger ones. Shells were not applied anywhere among the ancients, except where it was in accordance with the story, such as in the case of Venus or the sea gods, or where it was suitable for the location, as in the temples of Neptune. It is also believed that old lamps decorated with shells were used in temples of this divinity. So they can indeed be beautiful and meaningful in many locations, as in the festoons on the town hall in Amsterdam.\
The use of sheep\'92s and bulls\'92 heads provides less justification for shell decoration than the author of the Open Letter perhaps thinks. Rather, they can be said to demonstrate the abuse of it. These heads separated from the flesh not only had a relationship to the sacrifices made by the ancients, but they are also believed to have had the power of withstanding lightning strikes. Numa said that he had received a special order from Jupiter concerning them. There is just as little justification in adding the capital of a Corinthian column to shell decoration as an example of apparently inconsistent decoration that has gained in truth and taste with the passage of time. The origin of this capital seems to have been much more natural and reasonable than was reported by Vitruvius. But consideration of this belongs in a work on architecture. Pococke, who believes that the Corinthian order was perhaps not well known when Pericles built the Temple of Minerva, should have recalled that the temples of this goddess had Doric columns, as Vitruvius informs us.\
With such ornaments one must proceed as is usual with architecture. The latter acquires a grand style if the main parts of the system of columns are divided into only a few parts and are given a bold and powerful grandeur and an outward sweep. One only has to think of the fluted columns on the Temple of Jupiter at Agrigento,33 in one of whose curves a man can just fit. These ornaments should not only be few in number but also consist of few parts, and these parts should sweep out boldly and freely.\
To return to allegory, the first rule could be divided into many subordinate rules. The artist should generally pay attention at all times to the nature of the subject matter and the circumstances, and concerning examples, the method of refutation seems to be more instructive in this case than the method of prescription.\
Arion riding on a dolphin\'92s back, applied as a painting to a sopra-porte, though apparently without a shelf, in a modern architectural structure would only be suitable for its location, according to the usual\
interpretation, in the halls and rooms of the Dauphin of France. In all locations, however, where this image cannot refer to either philanthropy or to the help and protection found by artists as Arion found it, it would have no meaning. In the city of Tarento, however, this very image, but without a lyre, could still nowadays provide decoration wherever it is put on all public buildings, for the ancient Tarentinians, who were given Neptune\'92s son Taras as their architect, used to emboss their coins with an image of him riding on a dolphin.\
The placing of ornaments on a building that a whole nation had a hand in accomplishing was not done in accordance with reality. This was Blenheim Palace, belonging to the Duke of Marlborough, where huge lions carved out of stone lie above the two portals and are tearing apart a cockerel. This invention is nothing but a very crude play on words.\
It cannot be denied that there are one or two examples of what appear to be similar ideas from antiquity, such as a lioness on the gravestone of the lover of Aristogiton, who was called Leaena, which was erected for her in recognition of the constancy she showed when tortured by the tyrant to force her to confess about the conspirators against him. I do not know if this gravestone can serve to justify word plays in modern ornaments. The lover of the martyr for freedom in Athens was a person of disreputable morals, and there was some doubt about putting her name on a public memorial. It is the same situation with the lizards and frogs on a temple, by which the architects Saurus and Batrachus sought to immortalize their names,34 which they were not allowed to make public. The lioness mentioned had no tongue and this idea imbued the allegory with truth. The lioness that was placed on the grave of the famous Lais was presumably a copy of the other one, and it held a ram in its front paws as a representation of her moral state. Generally a lion was most commonly placed on the graves of brave people.\
It cannot be expected that all ornaments and images of the ancients, even those on their vases and utensils, should be allegorical. The explanation of many of them would either be very laborious or be based on mere conjectures. I would not dare assert, for example, that an earthenware lamp in the form of an ox\'92s head served as a constant reminder of useful work performed, in the same way that fire signifies eternity. I am just as unwilling to see it as a representation of a sacrifice by Pluto and Proserpine. The image of a Trojan prince however, abducted by Jupiter and chosen by him as his favorite, had, on the cloak of a Trojan, a great and notable significance and was thus a true allegory, which failed to be recognized in the Open Letter. The significance of birds eating grapes seems to be as suitable on an urn for ashes as the young Bacchus, brought by Mercury to be suckled by Leucothea, on a large marble vase made by the Athenian Salpion. The birds can represent the enjoyment of the pleasure the dead man will have in the Elysian Fields, the amount of which depends on his prevailing\
tendency in life. As is well known, birds are symbols of the soul. A sphinx on a cup can also be interpreted as a reference by the artist to what happened to Oedipus in Thebes, the homeland of Bacchus, to whom the cup is said to be dedicated. The lizard on a drinking vessel by Mentor, however, can refer to its owner, whose name was perhaps Sauros.\
I believe that there is reason enough to seek allegories in most images of antiquity, when one considers that they used allegories in making their buildings. Such a work was the gallery in Olympia dedicated to the seven free arts, in which a poem, when read out, was repeated seven times by the echo. A Temple of Mercury, which rested on hermai, or terms, as one says nowadays, and which can be seen on a coin of the Emperor Aurelianus, can in some respects be included in this context. In the fronton are a dog, a rooster, and a tongue, the interpretation of which is well known.\
Still more erudite was the building of the Temple of Virtue and Honor undertaken by Marcellus. As he intended to use the loot he had acquired in Sicily for this purpose, his project was denied him by the high priests, whose approval he had sought beforehand, with the excuse that a single temple could not incorporate two divinities. So Marcellus had two temples built close together, in such a way that it was necessary to go through the Temple of Virtue to reach the Temple of Honor. In this way he demonstrated that only through the practice of virtue could one be led to true honor. This temple was in front of the Porta Capena. Another similar thought occurs to me in this context. The ancients used to make statues of ugly satyrs that were hollow. When they were opened, small figures of the Graces were revealed. Was not the purpose of this to show that one should not judge by outer appearance alone, and that what is lacking in the outer form can be replaced by understanding?\
I am afraid that some objections against my work in the Open Letter that I was willing to provide answers to may have been passed over by me. I am thinking here of the Greek art of making black eyes out of blue ones. Dioscorides is the only writer who provided a report of this. In recent times an attempt has also been made in this form of art. In modern times there was a certain duchess in Silesia, who was a well-known beauty. She was considered to be perfect, except that some people wished she had black eyes instead of blue ones. She learned of her admirers\'92 wishes, and employed all means possible to alter nature, and she succeeded. She acquired black eyes, but went blind.\
I have not done justice both to myself and perhaps also to the Open Letter. But art is inexhaustible, and one should not attempt to write everything. I tried to occupy myself in a pleasant way during the leisure granted to me, and discussions with my friend Herr Lriedrich Oeser,35 a true successor to Aristides, who depicted the soul and painted for the understanding, partly provided the occasion for this. The name of this worthy artist and friend shall adorn the end of my work.\
More Mature Thoughts on the Imitation of the Ancients with Respect to Drawing and the Art of Sculpture (1756-57)\
Fragment\
Almost a century has flowed by since a great part of the nation, struck with blindness, treasured nothing but that which was new, and they called this period the Golden Age of the Arts. This blindness was indeed a general malady of those times, and in Rome, the seat of the arts, it had much more dangerous consequences. It was the period when the vain splendor of the courts got out of hand and encouraged feebleness, laziness, and servitude among peoples. The various branches of knowledge were in the hands of fashionable scholars, antechamber scholars, and people only tried to learn a lot in order to be able to talk a lot, and appear sharp and effortless. They thought they could shorten the way of reaching the sources of fields of knowledge, and in that way the sources were respected less and finally forgotten. And this corruption spread from fields of knowledge to the arts. The writings of the wise men of Greece were as little read as the statues of their artists were looked at, and the number of those who were able to contemplate the works of ancient art with real understanding was still much less than those who secretly here and there studied the monuments to the intelligence and learning of this nation for their own satisfaction.\
As the language of Homer was explained as though it was like that in Athens, and people objected to translating cited Greek passages, because few needed it, it was nevertheless a time of knowledge about antiquity among scholars and artists. Ariosto, Raphael, and Michelangelo were creating enduring works and establishing their immortality. The fact that Greek scholarship flourished at that time was not indeed the most immediate cause of the imitation of antiquity by the latter two artists mentioned, but it was the more remote cause of it. General knowledge about the Greeks taught one to think like them and infused one with the spirit of freedom. This spirit of freedom was spread by wise men. And as Hobbes taught, this spirit cannot be smothered, except by forbidding young people to read works by the ancients. Many countries sighed beneath a gentle yoke, and so much inequality had not been introduced among mankind. But the scholars of this period had a great and closer share in the greatness that Raphael and Michelangelo attained. Their friends had been\
educated by reading Xenophon and Plato, and the latter writings meant to their nation what they should mean to the whole world.\
Over time people have not ceased completely studying the works of the ancients, but art has been conducted as a craft, even under the Carraccis, and those who became their students were instructed more in developing skills with their hands and imitating their masters than in acquiring the concepts of beauty of ancient artists. In most cases it was the same with the instruction to read some of the writings of the ancient Greeks.\
Description of the Most Excellent Paintings in the Dresden Gallery (1752)\
Fragment\
The greatest work by Correggio, which is the height of three men, is likewise a seated Madonna with several saints and a bishop in a sumptuous vestment, and is painted on canvas, just like a another Madonna of the same size with an Evangelist and a Saint Francis at her side, with a nun next to each of them. They are in his earliest style, which is in the style of Andrea Mantegna. But Richardson1 made a poor observation when he compared the style of the first of these two last-mentioned works with the Saint George.\
One can perceive with pleasure and amazement the leap he made from his early to his most mature style.\
Apart from these great works there is a portrait of a Medici by Correggio, but not in his best style. It is also from Modena.\
Among the most noteworthy works by Titian is a woman, not holding a portrait, but with a fan according to the fashion of the times, in the form of a piece of cloth on a standard. She is said to be the painter\'92s lover, Violanta. It is regarded as one of the most beautiful portraits by his brush. It is only a pity that it is too high up. The woman is dressed in white satin.\
The Three Graces are in his earliest style, for Titian altered his style more than once. That is to say that it has hard contours. Contours are the outermost lines that outline a figure. They are called hard if the outermost strokes do not fade out gradually but are suddenly cut off, as it were. The Disciples of Emmaus is more beautiful, and Christ being shown tribute money, known as the Cristo della moneta, is the most famous. It is from Modena. A copy exists of this that resembles the original as one egg does another.\
A reclining nude Venus is also claimed to be a work of this master. It has no excellent beautiful points however, and may probably be only from his school.\
There is a Savior by Titian\'92s master Giovanni Bellini, which can be considered of some value because of its antiquity, good expression, and outwardly beautiful aspects, which this work of the first years of the sixteenth century has retained. The figure is of natural size, and the cloak is in the most beautiful ultramarine, which because of trade between the Venetians and the Orient at that time cold not have been so expensive.\
It is well-known that this color is made from a precious stone called lapis lazuli, or \'93azure stone.\'94 Nowadays such a color but of a lower quality is still produced from such a stone, which is quarried in Italy. The best kind comes from Tartary, and even the water that is left over when this valuable color has been extracted and purified several times creates a special effect if figures are painted over with it. For example, in battle scenes, by using a gentle wash of it the backgrounds can be made to seem to stretch back a long way.\
Bellini is the first of the Venetians to paint in oil.\
There is a Christ expelling buyers and sellers from the temple by Tintoretto, a pupil of Titian, but the figures are of average quality. It is from Modena.\
There is also an Expulsion by Bassano from the same place, which is 2 feet 2 inches high and 2 feet 3 inches wide. This painting uses too much green, and you can recognize his work by this fact. His Birth of Christ and Exodus of the Children of Israel out of Egypt is criticized because this coloring can be found in them.\
Tintoretto\'92s genius and his often extravagant poses reveal themselves not so much in the small works as in the large ones, such as his Archangel Michael. Works by his brush are to be found in almost all collections of pictorial works, because he worked hard and swiftly.\
Works by Giorgione, Titian\'92s contemporary and a pupil of Giovanni Bellini, cannot be found so often, because he had a short life. Here there are a few head-and-shoulder portraits, and especially a fine Christ with the Tribute Money.\
He can be considered the first to paint boldly with deep shadows. The method was exceptional, but he was successful in using it. In the painting of his predecessors everything was mostly bright, without any gradation and variation. His successors in this strong dark manner, such as Michelangelo da Caravaggio, Spagnolet,2 and a few others, went even further.\
Inexperienced minds judge works of this kind in almost the same way as the Chinese judge our paintings in general. They do not like them because of the many black patches, which is what they call the shadows. They believe that violence is being done to nature, which is seldom unfriendly and gloomy but beautiful and bright. In Ruben\'92s paintings the opposite is the case: light spreads everywhere. But these different styles are based on the different disposition of the senses and human feelings. So already among the painters of the ancient Greeks and Romans there were some who adopted a dark and others a bright style.\
But for art enthusiasts who are not able to draw, the first view of such works should not be decisive. Someone said to Louis XIV, who was not taken with Princess Victoria of Bavaria on first seeing her when she arrived to become the Dauphin\'92s bride: \'93Forget your first impression and you will be happy with her.\'94\
It can often be noticed that, out of fear of judging like the common people, artists oppose popular taste and common sense, because most prefer the dark style. It is possible to agree with them concerning the works of Guido Reni, whose works in his earliest stronger style like that of Caravaggio are superior to his late bright and vague style, at least with respect to their strength, expression, and grandeur.\
There is also a soldier from Modena, life-size, by Caravaggio, and he has made everything about it really tangible by the use of black shadows. But a Peter in Prison and a group playing cards are more accomplished. The works in question are hung very high up. But one work of a trickster playing cards with someone is hung lower down, so that its style can be noticed.\
There are a Praying Hermit and a St. Stephen, life-size, by Spagnolet, that should be noticed, the latter in his very dark style. The St. Francis and especially the Peter in Prison are in his best style. His Hermit can be compared with Rubens\'92s Hermit, or Saint Jerome, by which name this work is also known.\
There are estimable works there by Guido Reni. In his early strong style there are a so-called Presentation of Christ with the Four Evangelists, life-size, and a Saint Jerome of the same size, which are hung far too high for their excellent quality. In the first of these works there is a cardinal standing in the background, who greatly resembles cardinal Carlo Borromeo. This is a great error, but with his other excellent qualities\
Sunt delicta tamen quibus ignovisse velimus.3\
Further works by him are the Four Evangelists, works in square format, which can be seen nearby.\
An example of his middle style is the David with the Head of Goliath, a large work, which is the height of two men. A copy of it is so like the original that close up one can hardly tell one from the other. It is also said to be by him.\
His strength in the expression of the emotions and the grandeur of his figures are combined in every case with charm and tenderness in the young faces. The tenderness is completely different from that of Correggio. In the faces of his women there is something soulful and demure; in his male faces, which are mostly very pale, there is something sad and thoughtful. Whereas in Correggio\'92s faces everybody is laughing and playful.\
I do not present this judgment of Guido as a general one, and I have not found anyone who has made such a comment. I am judging by most of his large works that can be found here and that are in his early style. They are also holy images.\
His late style can be seen in the beautiful small Bacchus from Modena, which is twenty-six inches high, and twenty-two inches long.\
This style can be seen in a more deteriorated state in the large Ahasuerus and Esther, the cost of which work amounted to 3,000 ducats, without consideration of the transport expenses and honorarium to the bearer, young Crespi4 from Bologna, who let it become completely spoilt during the journey The robes are badly hung, though according to the famous Solimena5 he was a master at depicting them.\
Ahasverus has a face like Jesus, and the flesh color in general, also in the face of Esther, inclines too much toward a livid blueness, as can be found in most of the works of his late style.\
The best aspects of Guido\'92s style were followed by Antonio Burrini from Bologna, who died a few years ago, in his so-called Old and New Testaments, which have many life-size figures.\
Among the most distinguished treasures of the gallery are works of the highest quality by Luigi and Annibale Carracci.\
Annibale was the youngest of three brothers6 and the most accomplished. The Madonna with the Evangelist standing at her side reveals his greatness. The work is more than three and a half times the height of a man. The evangelist is almost twice the natural height of a man and a miracle of perfect draftsmanship.\
He produced it in his 28th year, as is indicated by the inscription of the year 1588, which he recorded on the footrest on which the Madonna is sitting. But he also contravened the chronology in this case: Saint Francis appears opposite the evangelist and kisses the feet of the child. His brothers would not have made this error, as they were more learned.\
Scarsellino da Ferrara7 made a grosser error in his Holy Family, in which Cardinal Borromeo, recognizable by his sharp face and large nose, is kneeling in front of the child. It is from Modena.\
The second large work by Annibale is the Almsgiving by Saint Rocchi, which is known in Italy by the name Opera delPElemosina.\
Also by him is a small oblong work, Cristo in Agonia, which is life-size and perfectly beautiful. There is also a life-size Apollo in the Clouds, drawn in a superbly light svelte way, and like the previous work very well colored and better than his large works. In the clouds around Apollo there appear seven heads of small spirits, which are not very graceful. This work is 8 feet high and 4 feet wide.\
There is an Assumption of the Madonna by Luigi Carracci, with large figures of all the apostles, and in fact those in front are larger than life-size. The face of the Madonna is full of both majesty and tenderness. It is possible to believe that she is really flying away with the angels who are accompanying her.\
All the works by the Carraccis are from Modena. I have seen them all except for the square ones.\
The greatest strength of these three brothers, who do honor to their art, is in their way of drawing, the like of which it is difficult to find. The beauties of nature and light and shade were not well-known to them.\
If I recall and continue to consider the little knowledge of this artist and others concerning light and shade, then I do not mean by this that they did not know how to cast light and shadows in the direction cast by nature, and that they did not know how to illuminate those parts that should be illuminated according to nature. But there is something that is missing from their works, and that can be found in the works of Correggio, Guido, Rubens, van Dyck, Rembrandt, and almost all the good Dutch painters.\
It is something that can only be observed but not expressed.\
It is not the light and shade that the divine Newton defined by rules and lines and about which the famous Saunderson, professor of mathematics in Cambridge, who became blind when he was only 12 months old, was able to formulate clear concepts, hold lectures, and also write. If the chiaroscuro of the painters could be calculated and measured, then the Carraccis, who had studied their art to such a high degree, would have surpassed all other painters.\
What is more, they had a dark way of painting, to which there were objections even in their period. And the length of time that has passed since has made their works even darker, which is particularly the case with the Almsgiving by Saint Rocchi.\
This darkness should be distinguished from the strength and audacity of Caravaggio.\
Pleasantness and tenderness is missing from the faces of Annibale: many of them are dominated by a wildness of character. The eyes of his women are generally large and fierce. The beautiful aspects of his works do not affect us in the least. This testifies to his own nature, which was unfriendly and obstinate. Our ideas are formed according to our temperament. In his works, however, the opposite is true: he was melancholy, but everything he produced was jovial.\
In the Almsgiving the saint, as he is the main figure, should have more solemnity.\
There are many superb large works by Paolo Veronese: an Adoration of the Wise Men from the Orient; a Purification of Mary in the Temple; a Presentation of Christ in the Temple; a Leading Christ to the Cross; a Resurrection; a Finding of Moses, and a large work that represents the family of the painter. One should not forget a Marriage at Cana, which seems to have been his favorite subject, for in almost all the gallery\'92s catalogues such a Marriage by him can be found.\
In the Adoration of the Wise Men he has followed the common delusion. Christ is to be found with his mother and father in a stable, in the company of oxen and asses. In this he has followed an erroneous\
explanation of two passages in the Prophets. It is not likely that the wise men would have paid a visit to a stable, for, according to the law, from the birth of the Savior till the Purification of his mother thirty days should have passed, and she would not have stayed for such a period of time in a strange place. The Greek word oixia also actually means a dwelling and cpd[xvr|] is used for more things than a crib.\
The composition is good; the garments hang well and are lavish; and the face of the Madonna is beautiful. One can learn to perceive the merits of this work to a greater extent through comparison with the large and valuable Adoration of the Wise Men by Albrecht Diirer, which I shall discuss below.\
Diirer did not find it necessary to have an ox and an ass present, and instead of a stable he even created a splendid portal.\
Giuseppe Chiari,8 a more modern painter, also left these creatures out of his large Adoration of the Wise Men.\
Paolo mainly managed to avoid his weakness in drawing the nude body. But it can be discovered, without being a master of the art, in his Resurrection, in the badly drawn feet of the savior and especially in one of the feet of the guards by the grave. The toes are drawn together underneath, as would occur from great pain during torture. The other works are fairly free of his usual errors concerning costume, except for the use of the fashionable clothes of his time, apart from the Finding of Moses (or how the Egyptian princess has the young Moses taken out of the water). It pleased him to include Swiss soldiers with halberds. This work, which like the Resurrection is smaller than the others, has certain merits compared with the others. The grouping is good and it has been preserved in a good bright condition.\
The princess is a perfect and sublime beauty, the like of which, according to the evidence of experts, is a rare thing in his works.\
Paolo noticed what he lacked in draftsmanship and attempted to improve himself by studying the works of II Parmigianino.9\
His Saint Stephen and John the Baptist in Glory was the first work to benefit from this great master of coloring, drawing, and especially of gentle, touching beautiful qualities in his faces.\
There are few spiritual works comparable to this work to be found, except those by Correggio. The conception is very simple, but the spirit of the coloring, the garments, and certain qualities of beauty unique to the artist, which can be easily distinguished from those of other artists, make it worthy of respect. It is the height of three men, and so well preserved that it seems to be freshly painted. After this his For tuna, with a woman who departs in sorrow because the goddess turns her back to her, should be mentioned. The latter does not have gentle nature in her face, which is characteristic of him. There is something wild about her, which is similar to the way the poet conceived her:\
Fortuna saevo laeta negotio et\
Ludum insolentem ludere pertinax\
(Horace, Car min a 3.29)10\
The figures are large, in fact life-size. Both works are from Modena.\
His life-size Madonna is large but completely in his style. The child is almost too naked. And the Madonna has fingers that are much too long for it to be called a beautiful hand.\
Albani11 has gone even further in the depiction of tenderness. Here one can find exceptionally beautiful works by him: a Bathing Nymphs, and a Diana with Bathing Nymphs and Actaeon, both of these works painted on wood. They are small but immediately attract all eyes to them. Albani also painted mostly in a small format.\
Gods of Love, playing nymphs and dryads\
Iunctaeque Nymphis Gratiae decentes12\
are as unsuitable for large works as a Murder of the Children in Bethlehem is for small ones. If you look at these works for a long time, then it seems as though they are about to come alive, like the bones in the painting of the prophet. The flesh is warm, or has, as painters say, been made warm. But his ideas do not appear in sufficient variety in the faces.\
This error, with which the artist has often been reproached, appears even more clearly in his otherwise famous Ball of the Amoretti, who are dancing around a footrest, on which two amoretti are holding a third. In the clouds Venus is kissing her son. She is dying at the same time as she kisses his mouth unceasingly\
quae quinta parte sui Nectaris imbuit.13\
This celebration has come about out of joy at the rape of Proserpine, which is shown in the background. The flesh of the dancing deities has that quality the Italians call morbidezza to a high degree. But all the features on their faces look the same. Perhaps the artist can be excused by the fact that they are all children of the same mother.\
The work is from Modena; it is 2 V2 feet tall and 3 feet 3 inches long, and is painted on copper.\
This is one of the same errors that can be observed in the otherwise acclaimed work by Subleyras14 of the sinful woman bathing the savior\'92s feet.\
A larger work by Albani, which represents Venus with playing amoretti, is probably only from his school. At least it does not come up to the quality of the works mentioned.\
A small Birth of Jesus, however, from Modena, is in his best style.\
Though he painted so diligently and carefully, he mostly knew how to conceal his labor through a few audacious strokes that he made over it.\
Such carefulness is necessary in all works made with intelligence and through the senses.\
His flesh color should be compared with that of the beautiful little Venus and Adonis on one of the doors of the entrance to the inner gallery, by Alessandro Turchi (called L\'92Orbetto),15 a painter who is otherwise little known. Concerning coloring, small works must be compared with other small works. It is true that the flesh coloring of the last-mentioned work does not have the translucence of the Birth of Jesus, but it seems to be more mature. Flesh color develops fully with time. In consideration of this the painter must give his flesh high tones and leave it to time to make it more mature. It is in the light of this experience that one must judge the latest works by the court painter Dietrich. His flesh color comes closest to that of Albani. One should also compare the Abduction of Proserpine by Johann Rottenheimer16 of Munich with these masters and works mentioned (it can be found inside the inner gallery, on the side of the left-hand entrance).\
For their talent for tenderness and the expression of gentle emotions, but in larger figures, it is reasonable to rank the cavaliere Carlo Cignani17 and Carlino Dolci18 alongside Albani.\
The Chastity of Joseph by the former is life-size, 3 feet high and as wide as it is high.\
The two works by the latter are of the same size and life-size: the Saint Cecilia (the patron saint of music) and The Daughter of Herodias with the Head of John.\
Cecilia is playing on a harpsichord. Her eyes show that she has lost herself in rapture over the heavenly music she hears. She is said to have cast all her instruments aside when she heard this one. An ordinary artist, out of concern that one would think she was no more than an ordinary woman playing, would have written some music up in the air, as was however rightly done in the Cecilia on the Gallery from Raphael\'92s school.\
Our artist has indicated it in the eyes and created his work for a thoughtful observer.\
One should not write everything that one could write, and similarly one should not paint everything\
Ut iam nunc dicat, iam nunc debentia dici\
Pleraque differat. . .19\
These works were produced with such diligence that it is almost impossible to notice any prominent brushstrokes.\
The only way to judge the greatness of a gallery just as one would the greatness of art is to seek out its great works.\
The Murder of the Children in Bethlehem by the cavaliere Celesti20 and the one by Trevisani21 are true heroic poems, and both\
are as perfect in their style as the poem Strage degli Innocenti by the cavaliere Marino,.22\
In this as in most of his great works Celesti followed Rubens, which is to say that his light is not narrowly focused but is spread out.\
Apart from in his Murder of the Children one can judge his fertile inventiveness, draftsmanship, coloring, and especially his sense of composition from the Battle of the Amazons at Night.\
In two other beautiful works by his brush, a taste prevails that is more subtle but still in his style: one of them depicts Bacchus and Ceres, who are seated and are embracing each other, together with several amoretti, and the other depicts the Israelites collecting their contributions to the casting of the Golden Calf by Aaron. One should especially consider the incomparable flesh color on the figure of Ceres. It is somewhat overheated, however, though perhaps that occurs on tender bodies that become as excited as the goddess does here.\
They are not as large as both the works mentioned before, which are almost 18 feet long.\
I was not able to examine these last two larger works close up, as I could the Murder of the Children by Trevisani, so I cannot judge them as well as the latter.\
What the ancients said of Menander can rightly be said of Trevisani: that he drew his creativity from the sea, out of which the Goddess of Love was born. All his works are full of spirit and charm.\
He followed the taste introduced to the Italians by Guido and especially Carlo Maratti.23 This is the style of painting flatly, in the modo vago, by which the contours lose themselves in gentle and faint shadows.\
It really requires a great talent to observe a fine order without confusion in such actual confusion as must naturally occur in the Murder of the Children in Bethlehem.\
Many thoughts that are not related to art also occur to one in relation to this work. Rage and compassion, love and despair fight with each other in the faces of the murderers and the mothers. This work is one of the greatest in the gallery.\
His Madonna with Child, with Joseph and many angels floating around, deserves to be ranked among the best works. It is large and adorned with a magnificent landscape.\
It should be noticed concerning this landscape, in comparison with those included in their works by old Italian painters, how the art of it has improved in this work. This merit can be attributed to a greater attention to nature in modern times (I am not referring to the ancient Greeks and Romans), such as Claude Lorrain, the landscape painter, has shown. He observed areas of land from break of day till evening. Primarily, however, art has become more perfect in this respect, partly since the Italians began to become more familiar with the beautiful aspects of other countries, but\
partly also since more perfect species have been produced through the interbreeding of animals.\
It is well known and also understandable that in warm countries the trees do not have such abundant and beautiful foliage as they do in moderate regions. From the landscapes of the Dutch painters therefore the Italian painters have . . .\
Unfinished\
Reflections on Art (date unknown)\
Reflections\
There is a similarity between judging works of art and reading books: you believe that you are understanding what you read, but when you have to explain it, you do not understand it. It is one thing to read Homer, but it is quite different to translate him while you are reading. Looking at art with good taste and looking at it with understanding are two different things, and from one generally valid thought you cannot conclude that someone has knowledge of it. Just as it does not follow that Cicero had thoroughly understood what he had written when he says that Canachus1 and Calamis2 had more hardness than Polycletus.\
It is difficult to write with brevity, and not every work lends itself to it. For in writing about something more fully, you cannot so easily be taken at your word. But our times require brevity especially because of the large number of writings available. The man who wrote to someone saying \'93I did not have time to make this letter shorter\'94 recognized what you needed to do to write with brevity.\
Plato never speaks of himself in his writings.\
In my attempt at writing a History of Art my intention was to proceed more like Herodotus than like Thucydides: the former starts from the times when the Greeks began to become great and stops with the humiliation of their enemies; the latter starts with the times when the Greeks began to feel unhappy.\
Concerning the way a poet ends his love poems, it cannot be said that poetry is a form of painting. It does not depict the poet himself but the things and persons imagined by him. He can be a philosopher and indeed a stoic but still speak the language of tender Sappho.\
* * *\
The Greeks created their works of beauty as nature itself did. The latter would produce beautiful human beings according to the process implanted in it by the Creator, the goal of which is the best and most perfect thing, and according to its disposition, to fulfill its own purpose, if it could develop the fruit in the mother free of all violent accidents and without any disturbance by intense emotions.\
In this respect the first great artists attempted to represent the heads and poses of their gods and heroes free of sensitivity and remote from\
any inner rage, with their feelings well-balanced and their souls peaceful and constant.\
* * *\
It is likely that art developed in the following stages: the first thing to be sought was the forms of figures, then their proportions, after this light and shadow, followed by formal beauty, then coloring, the gracefulness of the garments, and finally the fullness of the composition.\
On Beauty\
Beauty is nothing but the mean between two extremes. As the middle way is the best in all matters, so it is also the most beautiful. To find the mean one must know both extremes. God and nature have chosen the best, and the beauty of form consists in the relationship of things to a mean: uniformity does not make something beautiful. Our faces could not therefore, like the faces of animals, consist of two parts, a brow and a nose. Harmony is more perfect with odd numbers: two things placed next to each other are no good without a third. But if even numbers are increased in size, then the uniformity becomes less noticeable and they take on the characteristic of odd numbers.\
Recalling the Observation of Works of Art (1759)\
If you wish to pass judgment on works of art, then first look beyond that which draws praise by its diligence and hard work, and pay attention to what has been produced by understanding. For diligence can be in evidence without talent, and this is also noticeable where diligence is lacking. An image created very laboriously by a painter or sculptor can as such be compared with a book produced laboriously. For just as writing in a learned way is not the greatest art, so an image that has been thoroughly painted in a fine and smooth way is no proof of a great artist. And the unnecessarily accumulated passages from books that were mostly never read are to a written work what the indication of every small detail is to an image. This observation will ensure that you are not astonished at the laurel leaves on the Apollo and the Daphne by Bernini, nor at the net on a statue in Germany by Adam the Elder.1 Thus no distinguishing features that have been produced by diligence alone enable one to recognize or differentiate the ancient from the modern.\
Pay attention to whether the master whose work you are observing has thought it out himself or only imitated others, whether he recognized the primary aim of art, which is beauty, or created according to forms with which he was familiar, and whether he worked like a man or played like a child.\
Books and works of art can be made without much thought. I draw my conclusions from actual cases: in this mechanical way a painter can create a Madonna that is presentable, and a professor can even write a work of metaphysics that pleases thousands of young people. But the ability of an artist to think can only reveal itself in frequently repeated ideas and in his own inventions. For just as a single stroke can change the form of a face, so can the suggestion of a single thought, expressing itself in the direction of a limb, lend the design a different form and demonstrate the worth of the artist. In Raphael\'92s School of Athens Plato moves only his finger, but in doing so says enough, while figures by Zuccari2 express little with all their distorted twisting. For as it is more difficult to indicate much by a little than the opposite, and true understanding prefers to make an effect with little rather than a lot, so a single figure can provide scope to display the entire artistry of a master. But it would be as hard a requirement for most artists to represent an event in a single figure or\
in several, but drawn on a large scale, as it would for a writer to attempt to compose a very short text from one particular subject. For then in both cases weaknesses can appear that lay hidden in the larger mass. For this reason all budding artists, left to themselves, prefer to formulate their design from a mass of figures grouped together, rather than to execute it as a single one. It is the little things, more or less, which make the differences between artists, and the little imperceptible things that reveal design by thinking and sensitive beings. On the other hand, it is the manifold and easily graspable things that occupy weak senses and dull minds, so the artist who is satisfied with pleasing clever people can appear to be great in individual cases and diverse and intellectual through repetition and the use of the familiar. I am talking here with the voice of antiquity, for the works of the ancients teach us this, and people would write and create like them if they observed and examined their writings as well as their images.\
Pride in the face of Apollo expresses itself primarily in the chin and in the lower lip, anger in the nostrils, and contempt in the way his mouth is opened. On the other parts of this divine head the Graces dwell, and our experience of his beauty remains unalloyed and as pure as the sun, of which he is the image. In the pain of Laocoon you can see his annoyance, as though at the suffering he is not worthy of, in the wrinkling of his nose, and also his fatherly compassion swimming over his eyeballs like a dull mist. These beautiful qualities in a single impression are like an image expressed in one word by Homer. You can find it only if you know what you are looking for. You can be sure that it was the intention of the artists and the wise men among the ancients to indicate much by a little. That is why the mind of the ancients is to be found deep within their works. In the modern world it is mostly like the case of impoverished grocers who display all their wares. Homer provides us with a superior image, by making all the gods rise from their chairs when Apollo appears among them, than Callimachus does with his whole erudite song. If it is useful to have a principle, then be convinced of the rightness of what I have said. And approach the works of the ancients with this in mind, in the hope of finding much by seeking much. But you must observe them with great calm, for otherwise seeking much in a little and calm simplicity will leave you unimproved, as does an overzealous reading of the great Xenophon, whose style lacks embellishments.\
For me the opposite of thinking for oneself is copying, and not imitation. By the former I understand slavish following, but in the latter case the imitation, if it is carried out intelligently, can at the same time take on a different character and become something unique. Domenichino,3 the painter of gentleness, chose the heads of the so-called Alexander in Florence and the Niobe in Rome as his models. They can be recognized in his figures (Alexander in his John in St. Andrea Della Valle in Rome,\
and the Niobe in the painting of Tesoro in St. Gennaro in Naples), but they are not exactly the same. On stones and coins there can be found many images from Poussin\'92s paintings: the Solomon in his Judgment is the Jupiter on some Macedonian coins. But in his works they are like plants that have been moved, and that have a different appearance to that in their first location.\
Copying without thinking is to take a Madonna by Maratta, a Saint Joseph by Barocci and other figures from other sources and make a whole out of them, and a great many of the altarpieces in Rome are of this nature. The recently deceased Masucci in Rome was such a painter. I also describe it as copying when the work is done according to a certain formula, without being aware that one is not thinking. Of such a kind is the man who produced the Wedding of Psyche as prescribed to him for a prince. It seems that he had not seen any other version than that by Raphael in Farnesina. But his could also be a Queen of Sheba. Most of the recent large statues of the saints in St. Peter\'92s in Rome are of this kind: large pieces of marble, which each cost 500 scudi when they have been transformed. If you have seen one, you have seen them all.\
The second thing to consider in looking at works of art should be beauty. For intelligent people the supreme model for art is a human being, or its outer surface, and this is as difficult for the artist to investigate as the inner being is for the wise man, and the most difficult aspect, though it does not appear to be so, is beauty, because, to tell the truth, it cannot be counted or measured. For that reason the understanding of the proportions of the whole, the science of bones and muscles, is not as difficult as and is more commonly known than knowledge about beauty. And if beauty could be defined by a general concept, which is desirable and sought after, then it would not help a man who has not been granted sensitivity by Heaven. Beauty consists of diversity in simplicity. This is the stone of wisdom that artists have to seek, and which few find. Only someone who has developed this concept from within himself understands these few words. The line that defines what is beautiful is elliptical, and contained in it are simplicity and constant change: for it cannot be described by any circle, and changes its direction at all points, This is easily said but difficult to learn. Which line, more or less elliptical, incorporates the various aspects of beauty cannot be determined by algebra. But the ancients knew it, and it can be found in everything from human beings to their vessels. As there is nothing circular on a human being, so no profile of an ancient vessel is semicircular.\
If I am required to define some concepts of beauty perceptible to the senses, which is very difficult, then in the absence of perfect ancient works or casts of them, I would have no reservations about formulating them based on individual parts of the most beautiful human beings in the very place where I was writing. As this is not possible among the Germans, I\
would have to, if I wanted to explain it to others, be satisfied with indicating the concepts of beauty by stating what it is not. But for lack of time I must restrict myself to the face.\
The form of true beauty is wavelike in nature. The profile of a young man among the ancients is based on this principle, and it has nothing linear or artificial about it. But it is seldom to be found in nature, and even more seldom to be found in a harsh, rather than a fine, climate. It consists of a line that falls gently from the brow to the nose. This line is so characteristic of beauty that a face that appears beautiful when seen from the front loses much when viewed from the side, the more the profile diverges from the gentle line. The great corruptor of art, Bernini, did not want to recognize this line in his heyday, because he had not been able to find it in ordinary nature, which had been his sole model. And his school followed him in this. From this principle it follows further that neither the chin nor the cheeks, if they are marred by dimples, can be in accordance with the form of true beauty. Thus the Venus di Medici, which has such a chin, cannot be considered a supreme beauty. And I believe that she was modeled after a specific beautiful person, just as the heads of two other Venuses in the garden behind the Farnese palace are obviously portraits.\
In a form of true beauty the raised parts are not blunt and the curved parts not sharply cut off: the cheekbone is superbly raised and the chin forms a complete curve. The best artists among the ancients kept therefore that part on which the eyebrows lie sharply cut back, and during the decline of the arts in antiquity and their corruption in modern times this part was made too roundish and blunt, and the chin generally too small. From the blunt cheek bones it can judged that, among other things, the famous falsely named Antinous in the Belvedere in Rome is not from the highest period of art, nor is the Venus. This is, generally speaking, what is essential concerning the beauty of the face, which resides in the form. The features and charming aspects that heighten this, are matters of grace, which need special consideration. But I realize that I am going beyond my intentions, which were imposed on me by the shortness of time and the large burden of work. I have no intention of writing a systematic account of beauty, even if I could.\
The figure of a man has its beautiful qualities just as that of a youth has, but just as it is more difficult in all things to achieve variety in simplicity than variety in general, so the most difficult thing is to draw a beautiful figure of a youth in a great way (by this I mean to the highest degree of perfection possible). Whether it is convincing can be judged by everybody by the head alone. Consider the face of the most beautiful figure in modern paintings: almost always you will know a person who is more beautiful. I am basing my judgment on Rome and Florence, where the most beautiful paintings are.\
If there was one artist who was gifted with personal beauty, with a sense for what is beautiful, and with intellect and a knowledge of antiquity, then it was Raphael. And yet his beautiful figures are less beautiful than those that can be found in nature. I know people who are more beautiful than his incomparable Madonna in the Pitti Palace in Florence and than his Alcibiades in the School of Athens. The Madonna by Correggio is not a great concept, nor is that by Maratta in the gallery in Dresden; this is not to speak disparagingly of the original beautiful figures in the Holy Night by the former. And the famous Venus by Titian in the Tribuna in Florence is modeled on ordinary nature. The heads of small figures by Albano appear to be beautiful, but to go from what is small to what is big is, in this context, almost like wanting to steer a ship on the ocean after studying navigation in books. Poussin, who had studied antiquity more than his predecessors, knew his own limits and never attempted anything in a large format.\
But the Greeks seem to have been able to create beautiful figures as easily as turning pots, for almost all the coins of their free states show heads that are more perfect in form than what we are familiar with in nature, and this beauty is to be found in the line that makes up the profile. Should it not be an easy matter to discover the quality of this line? Yet in all books on coins they have deviated from it. Could not Raphael, who complained that he could not find a beautiful figure in nature worthy of his Galatea, have based his creation of it on the best Syracusan coins, as the most beautiful statues, except for the Laocoon, had not yet been discovered at his time? The human powers of conceptualization cannot do better than these coins, and neither can I in this case. I must ask the reader to look at the head of the beautiful Genius in the Villa Borghese, and Niobe and Her Daughters, which are images of the highest form of beauty. And away from Rome he must learn from casts or carved stones. Two of the most beautiful heads of young people are the Minerva by Aspasios,4 now in Vienna, and the youthful Hercules in the Stoss Museum in Florence. Whoever has not become acquainted with the best works of antiquity should not believe he knows what is really beautiful. Without this knowledge our concepts are individualized and developed according to our own inclinations. Among the beautiful figures by modern masters I cannot cite anything more perfect than the Greek dancer by Herr Mengs,5 which is a life-size half-figure, painted in pastel on wood for the Marquis de Croismare in Paris.\
Evidence that knowledge of true beauty can serve as a rule in judging works of art is provided by the modern stones that have been diligently modeled on ancient carved stones. Natter6 ventured to copy the aforementioned head of Minerva both in the same size and smaller, but nevertheless he could not achieve the same beautiful form: the nose is just a little too forceful, the chin is too flat, and the mouth poor. And the same\
is true of other imitations of this kind. If the masters cannot achieve it, what can be hoped of the students, and what can one expect of one\'92s own drawings of beautiful figures? I do not wish it to be concluded from this that simple imitation of ancient heads is impossible, but such artists must be lacking something. Natter\'92s book on carved stones does not reveal much insight into ancient art, even in the one way in which he himself practiced it, and which can be demonstrated in future.\
My conviction therefore that the concept of beauty among the ancients is difficult to attain is one of the main reasons for the rarity of counterfeit Greek coins from the best period. A new fake coin that was presented as having been minted in the Greek free states would be easy to discover by comparison with a genuine one. Among imperial coins deceit was easier. The stamps carved for ancient coins by the famous Padoano are in the Museo Barberini in Rome, and the one by Michel,7 a Frenchman, who practiced the art in Florence, are in the Stoss Museum.\
Thirdly, concerning the creation of a work of art in the narrower sense, after the design has been finished, then diligence in the work is to be praised, but it is understanding that must be valued. The hand of the master can be recognized, as in writing, by the clarity and the forceful expression of the ideas, that is to say by the freedom and sureness of the hand of the artist in his execution. In the Transfiguration of Christ by Raphael one can see the sure and free qualities of the great artist in the figures of Christ, St. Peter, and the Apostles on the right hand, and the laboriously conducted work by Giulio Romano on some figures on the left. Never admire either the gleaming gentle surface texture of marble nor the smooth reflective surface of a painting. The former is work a day laborer has sweated over, and the latter was not pondered over much by the artist. The Apollo by Bernini is as smooth as the one in the Belvedere, and a Madonna by Trevisani shows much more diligence than the one painted by Correggio. Where strength of the arms and diligence is concerned in the arts, antiquity had no advantage over us. And porphyry can be worked on just as well as in ancient times, which is denied by many ignorant writers, such as Carlencas,8 in a book, the translation of which does no honor to the Germans.\
The greater smoothness of the figures on deeply carved old stones is not the secret that Maffei9 claims to be revealing for the sake of the whole world (Verona Illustrata, part 3, chapter 7, 269), and by which he distinguishes the work of an ancient artist in stone carving from that of modern ones. Our masters in this art have achieved smoothness to as great an extent as the ancients. Smoothness in execution is like fine skin on a face, which does not by itself constitute beauty.\
I do not criticize the smoothness of a statue, because it contributes greatly to its beauty, although I have noticed that the ancients discovered the secret of carving out a statue just by using an iron tool, as was the\
case with the Laocoon. It is also very important for a painting how clean the brush is, but this must be distinguished from the blending of the colors, for the surface of a statue that was like the bark of a tree would be as unpleasant as a picture that had been executed just with a brush made of bristles, whether it be seen close up or from afar. It has to be designed with fire and carried out phlegmatically. I am referring to those works whose greatest merit is only diligence, such as those in marble by the Bernini school, and those on canvas by Denner, Seybold,10 and others like them.\
Dear Reader! This reminder is necessary. For as most people only skirt around the surface of things, so our eyes are drawn first by what is charming and brilliant, and this simple warning against errors that can easily occur in this situation is the first step towards knowledge.\
Besides, over the several years of my stay in Italy I have had the almost daily experience of seeing young travelers being led by blind guides, who chatter away in all seriousness about the masterpieces of art. I have it in mind to provide a more detailed report on this.\
On Grace in Works of Art (1759)\
Grace is what is intellectually pleasing. It is a concept that covers a broad range of things, because it also extends to all actions. Grace is a gift from heaven, but not like beauty, for heaven grants only the promise of it and the capability of achieving it. It is developed through education and reflection, and can become part of nature in those with the capacity for it. It cannot be forced in any way and is free of any labored wit, but it requires attentiveness and diligence, and naturalness in all actions, in which it reveals itself according to the talent of each person, helping him to rise to a suitable level of ease. It is effective in simplicity and in the calmness of the soul, and is obscured by wild fury and stirred up feelings. All human doings and actions are made pleasant by it, and in a beautiful body it exerts great power. Xenophon was gifted with it, but Thucydides did not seek it. The merit of Apelles1 and Correggio in modern times consisted of it, but Michelangelo did not attain it. However, the works of antiquity were generally endowed with it, and it can also be recognized in mediocre works.\
The identification and assessment of grace in human beings and in imitations of them in statues and paintings appear to vary, because many do not find something objectionable in this context that would be displeasing to them in real life. This variety in feeling is either due to the nature of imitation itself, which affects us more the more unfamiliar it is than that which is imitated, or it is more due to untrained senses and a lack of frequent observation and thorough comparison of works of art. For that which is found pleasing in modern works through intellectual enlightenment and the advantages of education is often found to be offensive after one has acquired a sound knowledge of the beauties of antiquity. A general feeling for what is truly graceful is therefore not natural. But as it can be acquired and is a part of good taste, it can therefore be taught, as the latter can, despite what the author of Letters on the English says, because beauty can be taught, although no general clear explanation of it has yet been determined.\
In providing instruction about works of art, grace is the most closely related to the senses and provides the most easily comprehensible proof to convince us of the superiority of ancient works over modern ones. And it is with this that one must begin to teach, before progressing to the high abstract concept of beauty.\
Grace in works of art is related only to the human figure and is to be found not only in what is essential, in its stance and gestures, but also\
in what is incidental, in ornament and clothing. Characteristic of it is the particular relationship of the acting person to the action, for it is like water, which is more perfect the less taste it has. All strange manners are as detrimental to grace as they are to beauty. It should be noted that I am talking of what is high or heroic and tragic in art, and not about the comic aspect.\
Stance and gestures on ancient figures are like those of a person who can awaken and demand respect when appearing before the eyes of wise men. Their movement contains the necessary reason for its effect within itself, as is usually the case with fluid and fine blood and good manners. Only in the case of bacchantes on carved stones is the pose suited to their meaning, that is to say it is forceful. What is said of standing figures is also true of lying ones.\
In a state of rest, in which one leg bears the weight and the other rests playfully, then the latter was placed only so far back as was necessary to remove the figure from a vertical position. And in fauns it has been observed that untrained nature can be observed in the way the foot is pointing, which, without any consideration for daintiness, is turned inwards. To modern artists a position of calm seemed to lack significance and spirit, so they moved the free foot further out. And to make a more ideal pose, they removed a part of the weight of the body from the weight-bearing leg, and turned the upper part of the body away from its point of rest, turning also the head, as people do who have unexpectedly seen a lightning flash. Those people to whom this is not clear, because of the lack of opportunity for observing ancient works, should imagine a knight in a comedy or a young Frenchman working himself up into a sweat. Where space did not allow this pose of the legs, then, in order not to leave the leg bearing no weight just idle, it was placed on a raised object, representing an image of a person who is putting his leg on a chair in the act of talking to someone, or who, in order to stand firmly, places a stone beneath himself. The ancients were so concerned about well-being that they did not like to make their figures stand with one leg crossed over the other, except as an indication of weakness if it was a Bacchus made of marble or a Paris or Nireus on carved stones.\
In the gestures of ancient figures joy is not expressed in laughter but only in the form of cheerfulness deriving from inner pleasure. On the face of a bacchante there dawns only the first glimmer of desire. In sadness and displeasure they are like the sea, which is calm in its depths when the surface is beginning to become restless. Even in her sharpest pains Niobe still appears as a heroine who does not wish to yield to Latona. For the soul can be so affected that, numbed by the greatness of suffering which it cannot comprehend, it comes close to being insensitive. In this case the ancient artists, like their poets, showed their figures, as it were, outside the action that would awaken terror and cries of woe in them, in order to represent the dignity of human beings in the composure of their souls.\
Modern artists, some of whom have not become familiar with antiquity, or have not managed to observe grace in nature, have depicted not only feelings found in nature but also ones not found there. The tenderness of a seated Venus in marble in Potsdam, by Pigalle of Paris,2 is in a state of feeling such that from her mouth, which appears to be gasping for air, water seems to be about to run out, and the reason for this is that she should look as though languishing with desire. Is it possible to believe that such a man had stayed in Rome for several years in order to imitate antiquity? A Caritas by Bernini on one of the papal gravestones in St. Peter\'92s in Rome is intended to be looking at her children with great affection and with motherly eyes, but there are many contradictory things in her face: affection comes across as a forced laugh, like that of a satyr, and that the reason for doing this was so that the artist could give her dimples in her cheeks, which was his usual way of suggesting grace. In representing sadness some go as far as showing hair being torn out, as can be seen on many famous paintings of which there are engravings.\
The movement of the hands accompanying the gestures and the way of holding them in general is the same on ancient statues as they are on people who do not think they are being observed. And although few hands on such statues have been preserved, it can be seen by the direction of the arm that the movement of the hand was natural. Those artists who replaced the missing or mutilated hands have mostly given them a gesture that would be made in front of a mirror by a person wishing to display, for as long and as often as they can and fully exposed to the light, the hand they consider beautiful to those they are conversing with while adorning themselves. In general the expression of the hands is forced, like those of a young beginner in a pulpit. If a figure grasps its garment, then it holds it like a spider\'92s web. A Nemesis who on ancient carved stones usually raises her tunic gently above her bosom would only be allowed to do it in modern paintings with her three remaining fingers stretched out delicately.\
Grace, in the incidental details, ornament, and clothing of ancient figures, is to be found, as in the figure itself, in what is closest to nature. In the very oldest works the folds below the belt hang almost vertically, just as they would fall naturally on a thin garment. With the development of art there came a search for variety, but the garment was always represented as being made of a light fabric, and the folds were not piled up or separated here and there but were bunched together as a group. These were the two primary concerns in antiquity, as can be seen on the beautiful Flora (not the Farnese one) on the Campidoglio, from the time of Hadrian. Garments were made more separated out and loosely flying on Bacchantes and dancing figures, and also on statues, as is proved by one in the Riccardi Palace in Florence. But decency was respected, and the possibilities provided by the material were not exceeded. Gods and heroes appear to stand in sacred locations, where calm prevails, and\
are not represented as being at the mercy of the winds or waving flags. Loosely flying or light clothes are to found especially on carved stones, on an Atalanta for example, where both the person and the material require and allow it.\
Grace can also be extended to clothing, because for eons she, together with her sisters, had been clothed, and grace in clothing is a self-evident part of our concept when we imagine how we would like to see the Graces clothed. We would not dress them in formal clothes, but as we would wish to see a beautiful woman whom one loves, who has just risen from bed in a light wrap.\
In modern works of art it seems that after the period of Raphael and his best pupils no one thought that grace could also be an aspect of clothing, because instead of light garments they chose heavy ones, which can also be considered as serving to cover up their inability to depict beauty. For very capacious folds relieve the artist of needing to indicate, as the ancients attempted to, the form of the body beneath the garment. And a figure often seems only to have been made to wear its clothes. Bernini and Peter of Cortona3 became the models for large heavy garments among their successors. We dress ourselves in light materials, but our images gain no advantage from this.\
If one were to talk in historical terms about grace after the renaissance of art, then the opposite seems more likely to be true. In sculpture the imitation of one great man, Michelangelo, has distanced artists from antiquity and from knowledge about grace. With his high intelligence and great knowledge he did not want to be restricted to imitation of the ancients alone, and his imagination was too passionate for tender feelings and gentle grace. His published and unpublished poems are full of observations about the highest form of beauty, but he did not create it, and neither can one find grace in his works. For as he sought only what was extraordinary and difficult in art, so he made what was pleasing take second place, because the latter depended more on feeling than on knowledge, and he already had too much to do to demonstrate the latter in every case. His reclining statues on the gravestones in the archduke\'92s chapel in St. Lorenzo in Florence are in such unusual positions that in real life a body would have to make a great effort to maintain such a reclining position, and by this very artificial position he has diverged from what is suitable in nature and in the location for which he was making it. His pupils followed him, and as they could not equal him in knowledge, and their works also lacked this merit, so the lack of grace is more noticeable and more objectionable in those cases, as no understanding is involved. How little Guglielmo della Porta,4 the best of the school, understood grace and antiquity, can be seen in works such as the Farnese ox, on which the figure of Dirce is by his hand as far as the belt. Jean\
Boulogne,5 Algardi, and Fiammingo are great artists, but not as good as the ancients in those aspects of art that we are discussing.\
Finally Lorenzo Bernini appeared in the world, a man of great talent and intellect, but to whom the idea of grace never appeared, not even in a dream. He wanted to embrace all aspects of art, was a painter, architect, and sculptor, and attempted to become an original genius primarily in the latter field. In his eighteenth year he made an Apollo and Daphne, a wonderful work at such an age, and one that appeared to promise that through him sculpture would reach its highest peak. After this he made his David, which did not match the former work. General approval made him feel proud, and it seems that it was his intention, as he could neither attain the greatness of the ancient works nor put them in the shade, to follow a new path, which the spoiled taste of that time had made easier for him, a path on which he would be able to gain the first rank among artists of modern times. And he was successful in this. From that time on all sense of grace left him completely, because it could not be made compatible with his plan. For he seized upon what was completely contrary to antiquity: he sought his images in ordinary nature. And he based his ideal on creatures from a region completely unknown to him, for in the most beautiful parts of Italy nature is different from the way it is depicted in his images. He was revered and imitated as the God of Art. And as statues are only made to Holiness and not to Wisdom, so a figure by Bernini is better for a church than Laocoon. Dear Reader, you can confidently draw conclusions from Rome about other countries, and I shall in future provide reports relating to this. The acclaimed Puget, Girardon,6 and all the other masters ending in a nasal \'93on,\'94 are no better. What can be achieved by the best draftsman in France is shown by a Minerva in a copper frame at the beginning of Mariette\'92s book on carved stones.\
In Athens the Graces stood on the way up to the holiest places. Our artists should place them over their workshops and wear them on a ring as a constant reminder, and make offerings to them, to make these goddesses well-disposed towards them.\
In these brief reflections I have restricted myself primarily to sculpture, because they can also be applied to paintings outside Italy, and the reader will have the pleasure of discovering for himself more than I have mentioned. I am scattering just a few grains from what I shall sow more extensively when leisure and circumstances permit.\
Description of the Torso in the Belvedere in Rome (1759)\
I provide here a description of the famous torso in the Belvedere, which is generally called the Torso of Michelangelo, because this work was especially highly regarded by Michelangelo, and he made many studies of it. As is well known, it is a mutilated statue of a seated Hercules, and the master who made it is Apollonius, the son of Nestor of Athens. This description only concerns the ideal represented by the statue, especially because it is ideal in its conception. And it is one work from a similar description of several statues.\
The first work I applied myself to in Rome was describing the statues in the Belvedere, namely the Apollo, the Laocoon, the so-called Antinous, and this torso, as the most prefect examples of ancient sculpture. The presentation of each statue was intended to be in two parts: the first concerning its ideal aspect, and the second its artistic qualities. And it was my intention to have the works themselves drawn and engraved by the best artist available. This enterprise was, however, beyond my means, and would depend on advances provided by generous enthusiasts. So that is why this draft, over which I have pondered much and for a long time, has remained unfinished, and the present description still requires some final touches.\
It should be regarded as a sample of what can be thought and said about such a perfect work of art, and as an indication of how to study art. For it is not sufficient to say that something is beautiful. One should also know to what extent and why it is beautiful. The antiquarians in Rome do not know this, as those to whom they have acted as guides have born witness to me, and very few artists have acquired insight into what is of high quality and sublime in the works of the ancients. It is very much to be desired that someone in favorable circumstances should be found who is in a position to undertake a description of the best statues and carry it out appropriately, in a way that would be indispensable for the instruction of young artists and enthusiasts on their travels.\
I now turn your attention to the so much praised and never sufficiently acclaimed torso of Hercules, a work that is the most beautiful of its kind and must be counted among the greatest of those productions of art that have survived up to our own times. How shall I describe it to you, as it has been robbed of the most attractive and significant parts of its\
Fig. 3. The Belvedere Torso, neo-attic artwork, first century CE. TIjc inscription on the pedestal reads \'93made by Apollonios, son of Nestor, Athenian.\'94 TIjc Vatican Museums, Masco Pio-Clementino, Rome. Photo: F. Bucher, Wikimedia Commons.\
nature. Just as only the trunk remains of a mighty oak that has been felled and stripped of its twigs and branches, so the image of the hero sits there maltreated and mutilated: head, breast, arms, and legs are all missing.\
At first glance you will probably see only a shapeless stone. But if you are able to penetrate the secrets of art, then you will perceive a miracle, if you observe this work with a calm eye. Then Hercules will appear to you\
as if in the midst of all his tasks, and both hero and god will be visible in this work at the same time.\
It is at the point where the poets finished that the artist began. The former fell silent as soon as the hero was taken up to join the gods and was married to the goddess of eternal youth, but the latter shows him in his deified form together with his equally immortal body, which has however retained the strength and ease with which he accomplished his great tasks.\
I see in the powerful contours of this body the unvanquished strength of the conqueror of the mighty giants, who rose up against the gods, and were laid low by him in the Phlegraean Fields. And at the same time the gentle features of this contour, which the structure of the body has made light and supple, cause me to see its swift turns in his struggle with Achelous, who despite his manifold transformations could escape his hands.\
In every part of this body there is revealed, as though in a painting, the complete hero in a specific deed, and one can see how it is used, which action each part serves, just like the right intentions in the logical building of a palace.\
I cannot look at what little remains to be seen of the shoulders without recalling that the entire weight of the heavenly sphere had rested on their extended strength, as though on two mountains. With what greatness the breast seems to grow, and how splendid the rising curve of its vault. It must have been such a breast on which the giant Antaeus and Geryon with his three bodies was crushed. No breast of an Olympic victor, crowned three or four times, nor the breast of a Spartan conqueror born of heroes, could have appeared so splendid and uplifted.\
Ask those who are familiar with what is most beautiful about mortal beings whether they have seen a flank that is comparable to this left flank. The action and reaction of its muscles has been wonderfully assessed, with a wise measure of alternating movement and rapid force. And the body must have been built by these means in a way suitable for everything it needed to accomplish. Just as in a rising movement of the sea, the surface, which had hitherto been calm, grows in a gentle disturbance with lapping waves, with one swallowed by the other only to be rolled out of it again, so here one muscle, gently swelling up and floating, flows into the next. And a third one, rising between them, and seeming to strengthen their movement, loses itself in them, and our glance seems to be swallowed up with it.\
Here I would like to pause, to leave room in our reflections to impress on our imagination a lasting image of this flank. But the highly beautiful qualities here are limitless, and cannot be conveyed through analysis. What kind of conception can we have of the hips, the firmness of which can signify that the hero never wavered and never had to yield.\
At this moment my mind travels through the most remote regions of the worldd through which Hercules passed, and I am led to the farthest reaches of his labors and the monuments and columns where his feet rested. This is due to the sight of those thighs of inexhaustible strength and of a length unique to the gods, which carried the hero through a hundred lands and peoples till he became immortal. I was beginning to reflect on these remote details when my mind was called back by a glance at his back. I was delighted when I saw this body from behind, like a person who, after admiring the splendid portal of a temple, is led up to the highest part of it, where its vault, which he cannot survey completely, astonishes him anew.\
Here I can see the noble structure of the bones in this body, the origins of the muscles and why they have that position and movement. And all this is revealed like a landscape discovered from the heights of the mountains, a landscape over which nature has poured the manifold riches of that which is beautiful in her. Just as her joyful heights lose themselves down gentle slopes into sunken valleys, here becoming narrower and there broadening out, so the swelling hills of muscles rise in various forms, splendid and beautiful, around which often imperceptible valleys curve like the river Meander, valleys that reveal themselves less to sight than to the feelings.\
If it seems incomprehensible to situate the power of thought in another part of the body than the head, then you should learn from this case how the hand of a creative master is able to imbue matter with a mental capacity. It seems to me that the back that appears bent from lofty reflections forms a head that is occupied with happy memories of its amazing deeds. And as such a head rises full of majesty and wisdom before my eyes, the other missing limbs begin to take shape in my imagination. Some sort of force is discharged from what is present and brings about a sudden completion, as it were.\
The strength of the shoulders indicates to me the strength of the arms that strangled the lion on the Cithaeron mountain range, and I attempt to visualize the ones that bound Cerberus and dragged it off. His thighs and the one knee give me an idea of the legs, which never became tired, and pursued and caught up with the deer with bronze hoofs.\
By a secret art the mind is led through its deeds of strength to perfection of the soul, and in this work there is a memorial to this that no poet can erect by merely singing of the strength of his arms. The artist has surpassed this. His image of the hero leaves no room for thoughts of violence and exuberant love. In the peace and calm of the body a great mind at rest reveals itself: the man who has become an example of virtue for poets, who exposed himself to the greatest dangers out of his love for justice, and who brought established security to the countries and peace for their inhabitants.\
This excellent and noble form of such a perfect natural being is as if veiled in immortality, and the figure is like a mere vessel for it. A higher spirit seems to have taken the place of the mortal parts and to have spread itself there instead. It is no longer the body that still has to fight against monsters and disturbers of the peace. It is the one who was purified on Mount Oeta of the detritus of humanity, which from its beginnings had cut itself off from its similarity to the father of the gods.\
Neither his beloved Hyllus nor the gentle Iole had seen Hercules in such perfection. Thus he lay in the arms of Hebe, the goddess of eternal youth, and drew on her constant influence. His body was nourished by no mortal food or coarse matter: the food of the gods sustained him, and he seemed only to enjoy and not to consume it, without ever being made full by it.\
Oh how I should like to see this image in the greatness and beauty with which it revealed itself to the mind of the artist, just to be able to say from the remains what he had thought, and how I should think. My greatest happiness after the artist\'92s own would have been to give a more worthy description of this work. But I stand there full of sadness, and just as Psyche began to weep about love after she had learned about it, so I lament the irreplaceable damage to this Hercules, after I have gained insight into its beauty.\
Art also weeps with me, for this is a work that can be contrasted with the greatest inventions of imagination and reflection, and because of which she could still now raise her head as in her golden age to the greatest height of human respect. This work, which is probably the last on which she has employed her utmost strength, she must regard as half destroyed and dreadfully maltreated. Who would not here take to heart the loss of so many hundreds of other masterpieces of this kind! But Art, who wishes to teach us more, summons us back from these sad reflections and shows us how much can still be learned from what remains, and with what kind of an eye the artist must regard things.\
After this description of the ideal aspects, it is intended that a description of the artistic aspects should follow.\
Treatise on the Capacity for Sensitivity to the Beautiful in Art and the Method of Teaching It (1763)\
ojicog 6e Xvaai Suvaxog o^ei-av 87njiO|icpav 6 xoxog &v5qg)v.\
\'97Pindar, Olympian, 101\
My Friend!\
Concerning the delay of the draft text promised to you on the ability to appreciate beauty in art, I shall explain myself in the words of Pindar. When he had made Agesidamus, a noble youth from Locri, \'93beautiful of form and permeated with grace,\'94 wait a long time for an ode he had intended for him, he said \'93A debt paid with interest removes the reproach.\'94 My Kind Lord can relate this to the present treatise, which has turned out to be more elaborate than was intended originally, when that which was promised was to appear together with other so-called Roman Letters.\
The content stems from you. Our acquaintanceship was short, and too short for both you and me, but the harmony between our minds was obvious to me when I caught sight of you for the first time. Your physique led me to conclude the existence of that which I desired, and I discovered in a beautiful body a soul made to be virtuous, one that is gifted with the appreciation of beauty. Taking leave of you was therefore one of the most painful such occasions of my life, and our mutual friend2 is a witness to this, even after your departure, for your being at such a distance under remote skies leaves me no hope of seeing you again. Let this essay be a memorial to our friendship, which in my case is free of all conceivable intentions, and remains constantly obliged and dedicated to you.\
The ability of appreciating what is beautiful in art is a concept that incorporates at the same time the person and the object, that which contains and that which is contained, but which I regard as one, and so I am here directing my attention primarily to the first. I wish to point out provisionally that the Beautiful has a wider application than Beauty: the latter is a matter of education and is the highest aim of art; the former extends to everything that is thought, conceived, and realized.\
With this ability it is the same as with common sense: everyone believes they possess it, while it is nevertheless rarer than wit. Because you\
have eyes, like the next man, you claim you can see as well as he. Just as a girl does not easily consider herself to be horrible, so everyone claims they can recognize the Beautiful. There is nothing more hurtful than to deny someone good taste, which is another word for this very ability. One is more willing to admit oneself lacking in all kinds of knowledge than to hear the reproach that one is incapable of recognizing the Beautiful. One is willing to admit one\'92s lack of experience in this knowledge if necessary, but one would assert one\'92s ability to appreciate it. It is the same as with the poetic spirit, which is a gift of Heaven. Like the poetic spirit, it can develop only poorly by itself, and without instruction and teaching it would remain empty and lifeless. Consequently this treatise has two aspects: this natural ability in general, and the teaching of it.\
The ability of appreciating the beautiful has been given by Heaven to all rational beings, but to very different degrees. Most are like those light materials that are attracted indiscriminately by a magnetic body, but soon fall down again. So the feeling is brief, like the sound of a briefly tensed string. The Beautiful and the mediocre are equally attractive to them, as merit and vulgarity are to a person with an undeveloped sense of politeness. With some people this ability is present to such a low degree that they would appear to have been passed over by nature in the distribution of it. Of such a kind was a young high-class British man who, in the coach we were travelling in, did not even give any sign of life and his existence in general while I was making a speech to him about the beauty of Apollo and other statues of the highest quality. The sensitivity of the Count Malvasia,3 the author of the Lives of Bolognese Painters, must have been of the same crude nature. This windbag calls the great Raphael a potter from Urbino, based on the crude rumor that this god among artists painted vessels. This shows a rare example of ignorance on the other side of the Alps. He does not shrink from pretending that the Carraccis ruined themselves by imitating Raphael. On such people things of true beauty in art have an effect like the Northern Lights, which shine but do not provide heat. One could almost say that they are those kind of creatures that, as Sanchuniathon4 says, have no sensitivity. Even if the Beautiful in art were nothing but appearance, as God is said to be nothing but an all-seeing eye according to the Egyptians, in such a unified form it would nevertheless not attract many people.\
One could also draw a conclusion concerning the rarity of this sensitivity from the dearth of writings teaching us about the Beautiful. For from Plato up until our own times, writings of this kind on the Beautiful in general are vacuous, teach us nothing, and have a low level of meaningful content. Some modern writers have wanted to treat of the Beautiful in art without being able to recognize it. I could provide you with new evidence of this, my friend, from something written by the famous Herr von Stosch,5 the greatest expert on antiquities of our time. In this, written\
at the beginning of our friendship, and because he did not know me personally, he wanted to provide me with some instruction about how to rank the best statues, and about the order in which I should study them. I was astonished when I saw that such a well-known antiquarian placed the Vatican Apollo, an artistic marvel, after the sleeping faun in the Barberini Palace, which is a woodland creature, after the centaur in the Villa Borghese, which cannot be endowed with ideal beauty, after two old satyrs on the Campidoglio, and after a goat from the time of Justinian, the best part of which is the head. The Niobe and her Daughters, the model of highest female beauty, is placed last in his order. I convinced him of his erroneous ranking, and his excuse was that he had seen the works of ancient art in his early years, in the company of two artists who are still alive on the far side of the mountains, and on whose judgment he had since based his own. Various letters were exchanged between us concerning a round work in the Villa Pamphili, with figures in relief, which he considered to be the oldest monument of Greek art, but which I on the other hand considered to be one of the latest under the emperors. What was the reason for his opinion in this case? The worst was considered to be the oldest. And Natter follows this scheme for his cut stones, which can be demonstrated from what he says about the third and sixth copper plate. Just as erroneous is his judgment on the supposedly great age of the stones on plates eight to twelve. Here he follows history and believes that a very ancient event, such as the death of Othryades, must also presuppose a very ancient artist. Through such experts what is claimed to be a Seneca in the Bath, in the Villa Borghese, has been paid some attention, but it has a web of veins like knitting and is in my eyes not worthy of being considered ancient art. This judgment will seem like heresy to most, and a few years ago I would not have dared to state it publicly.\
This ability is stimulated and developed earlier by good education, and reveals itself sooner than with a neglected education, which however cannot smother it, as I know from my own case. But it develops better in large rather than small towns, and more through familiarization than through erudition. For, as the Greeks say, much knowledge does not give rise to sound understanding, and those who have made themselves familiar with antiquities merely through erudition are no more well-informed about them. For those born in Rome, in whom this feeling could develop earlier and become more mature, it is felt to have no purpose in education and does not develop, because human beings are like hens, who pass over the corn lying right in front of them to get that which is further away. What is daily in our sight tends to awaken no desire. A well-known painter who is still alive, Nicolo Ricciolini,6 who was born in Rome and is a man of great talent and knowledge, even outside his art, saw the statues in the Villa Borghese for the first time in his life a few years ago, at the age of seventy. This man studied architecture thoroughly, and yet he had not\
seen one of the most beautiful monuments, that is, the grave of Cecilia Metella, the wife of Crassus, despite the fact that as a lover of hunting he had roamed around far and wide outside Rome. For the reasons given, therefore, few famous artists, apart from Giulio Pippi,7 have arisen from those born in Rome. Most of those who became famous in Rome, painters as well as sculptors and architects, were strangers, and even now no Roman has distinguished himself in art. From this experience therefore I regard it as a premature judgment to sign up at great cost men born in Rome to draw the paintings in a gallery in Germany, where more skillful artists could be found.\
At the onset of youth this ability, like every inclination, is veiled in dark and confused emotions and reveals itself like a fleeting itching of the skin, the precise location of which we cannot reach by scratching. This can be more easily found in well-educated boys than in others, because we generally think according to the way we are made, but it is less a matter of education than of our character and disposition. A gentle heart and obedient mind are signs of such an ability. It reveals itself more clearly when sensitivity is moved in a tender way while reading a writer whose work the uncultivated mind would pass over. This would occur on various occasions in the speech by Glaucus to Diomedes, in which he movingly compares human life to leaves that are cast down by the wind but which sprout up anew in the spring. Where this sensitivity is not present, it is like teaching knowledge of the Beautiful to the blind, or music to someone with unmusical hearing. A clearer sign, which can be found in boys who have not been brought up in proximity to art, nor seem to be especially destined for it, is a natural inclination to draw, which is innate, as with the inclination to poetry and music.\
Be it noted that as human beauty is to be comprehended in one general concept, I have pointed out that those who pay attention only to the beautiful aspects of the female sex, and are affected only a little or not at all by the beautiful aspects of our sex, do not have a general, lively, and innate sensitivity to the Beautiful. They will lack a sense for it in the art of the Greeks, as the greatest examples of beauty in it belong to our, rather than the opposite, sex. Greater sensitivity is necessary for the Beautiful in art than that in nature, however, because the former, like tears in the theater, is without pain and any sense of life, and it must be aroused through and substituted by the imagination. But as the latter is much more passionate in youth than in the years of manhood, so this ability of which we speak should be practiced early and directed toward the Beautiful, before we reach that age in which we are horrified to admit that we do not feel it.\
But if someone has been admiring what is bad, one cannot always conclude that he does not have the capacity for such sensitivity. For just as children who are allowed to hold everything that they look at close\
to their eyes will learn to squint, so can such sensitivity be spoiled and develop wrongly, if the models presented to it in those early years as perception develops were mediocre or bad. I remember that talented people, in places where art had not been able to establish itself, talked a lot about the prominent veins on the small male figures in our old cathedral, to show off their taste. They had not seen anything better, just like the people in Milan, who prefer their cathedral to the Church of St. Peter in Rome.\
The true feeling for the Beautiful is like fluid gypsum that is poured over the head of Apollo and reaches and envelops every part of him. The model for such a feeling is not that which is extolled by instinct, friendship, and a pleasant disposition, but that which is felt by a finer inner sense, purified of all personal intent, for the Beautiful itself. Here you will say, my dear friend, that I am bringing in Platonic concepts, which would deny this feeling to many people. But you know that in teaching, as with laws, one must seek to strike the highest note, because the string will become slack by itself. I say what should be and not what is usually the case, and my way of understanding is like a test of the rightness of a calculation.\
The tool employed by this sensitivity is the outer senses, and the sensitivity itself is located in the inner sense. The former must be accurate and the latter sensitive and fine. But an accurate eye is something that many lack, as are fine hearing and a delicate sense of smell. One of the most famous singers in Italy at present possesses all the qualities of his art, except for accurate hearing. He lacks what the blind Saunderson, Newton\'92s successor, had in abundance. Many doctors would be more skillful if they had acquired a fine sense of feeling. Our eyes are often deceived by optical devices and not infrequently they deceive themselves.\
The accuracy of the eye consists in noticing the true shape and size of the objects placed before it, and shape refers to color as well as form. It must be the case that artists do not see colors in the same way, because they imitate them differently. As proof of this I will not cite the generally bad coloring of some painters, such as Poussin, because this is due partly to bad training and to ineptitude. I conclude instead, from what I myself have noticed painters doing, that they are unaware of their bad coloring. One of the best British painters8 should have valued less highly his life-size Death of Hector, in which the coloring is much less accomplished than the drawing. This work, which has been engraved on copper in Rome, will appear shortly. My statement is based primarily on those artists who can be counted among the good colorists but have certain weaknesses. I can cite in this context the famous Federigo Barocci, whose flesh tends towards a greenish color. He had a certain way of applying green as the first color to the naked body, as is evident from several unfinished works in the Albani Gallery. The coloring, which is soft and cheerful\
in Guido\'92s work, and appears strong, dull, and often sad in Guercino\'92s,9 can also be noticed on faces by both these artists.\
No less different are artists in the ways they represent the true shapes of forms, which one must conclude from the ways they have imagined them in unfinished sketches. Barocci can be recognized by his greatly lowered facial profiles, Pietro di Cortona by the tiny chins on his heads, and Parmigianino by his long ovals and long fingers. I do not wish to assert that all artists lacked correctness of vision at the time when all figures seemed to be consumptive, as was the case before Raphael, and when they seemed to have the dropsy through Bernini\'92s influence. For the responsibility for this is to be found in the preference for the wrong system and in following it blindly. It is essentially a problem of size. It can be seen that artists lack something in their portraits with respect to the proportion of the parts that they can visualize just as they want them when they are not working. With some the head is smaller, or bigger, and with others it is the hands. Sometimes the neck is too long, or too short, and so on. If the eye has not mastered these proportions after several years of constant practice, then it is vain for hope for it.\
As what we have observed to be true of accomplished artists originates in an inaccuracy of their eyesight, it must also occur even more often in persons who have not practiced using this sense in the same way. But if there is a tendency to accuracy, then it can be made sure through practice, as is the case with the sense of vision. Cardinal Alessandro Albani is capable, just by touching and feeling many coins, of saying which emperor is represented on them.\
If the outer senses are accurate, then it is to be wished that the inner sense is correspondingly perfect, for the latter is like a second mirror, in which we can perceive from the profile what is essential in the resemblance to us. The inner sense represents and forms the impressions received in the outer senses and is, in a word, what we call sensitivity. The inner sense is, however, not always proportionate to the outer senses. That is to say that it is not always sensitive to the same degree of accuracy as the latter, which functions mechanically, while the former is a mental process. Thus there can be genuine draftsmen without sensitivity, and I know such a man. They are, however, at the most skilled in imitating the Beautiful, but not in discovering it themselves and drawing it. Nature did not grant Bernini such sensitivity in sculpture. But it seems that Lorenzetto10 was gifted with it more than other sculptors in modern times. He was a pupil of Raphael, and his Jonas, in the Capella Chigi, is well-known. But a more perfect work by him in the Pantheon, a standing Madonna, twice life-size, and which he made after his master\'92s death, is not noticed by anyone. Another outstanding sculptor is known even less. His name is Lorenzo Ottone;11 he is a pupil of Ercole Ferrata,12 and there is a standing Saint Anna by him in the same temple, so two of the best modern works stand\
in the same place. After these the most beautiful figures by modern sculptors are the Saint Andreas by Fiammingo, and the Religion by Legros in the church of II Gesu. I am digressing here, which deserves to be excused, because it is instructive. This inner sense of which I speak must be adroit, delicate, and imaginative.\
It must be adroit and quick, because first impressions are the strongest and precede reflection. What we experience through the latter is weaker. This is the general feeling that draws us to the Beautiful and can be vague and unfounded, as tends to happen with all first and quick impressions until examination of the works allows, accepts, and requires reflection. Anyone wishing to proceed from the parts to the whole would reveal himself to be pedantic and would have difficulty in awakening in himself a sensitivity for the whole and a feeling of delight.\
This sense must be delicate rather than intense, because the Beautiful consists in the harmony of the parts, and this is characterized by a gentle rising and falling, which consequently has an even effect on our sensitivity and guides it in a gentle way, not suddenly sweeping it along. All intense feelings pass over intermediate stages and have an immediate effect, whereas when feelings are to be moved, it should be like the coming of a fine day, which is announced by the charming rosy light of dawn. And intense feeling is detrimental to the contemplation and enjoyment of the Beautiful, because it is too brief, for it leads us directly to what we should experience step by step. In this respect also antiquity seems to have couched its ideas in the form of images and concealed their meaning, to allow the understanding to have the pleasure of discovering it indirectly. Thus very passionate and superficial minds are not the most capable of sensitivity to the Beautiful. Thus, as our own enjoyment and real pleasure are to be obtained through the composure of the mind and the body, so too are the feeling for and enjoyment of the Beautiful, which must therefore be delicate and gentle, and which should come like the soft dew and not like a downpour.\
As what is truly beautiful about the human figure is generally manifest in a calm, innocent, natural appearance, it also needs to be felt and recognized by a similar sense. Here no Pegasus is necessary to transport us through the air, but a Pallas to guide us.\
The third characteristic of inner feeling as I have mentioned, which consists in a lively depiction of the Beautiful as observed, is a result of the first two and cannot exist without them. But its strength grows, as memory does, through practice, which contributes nothing to the other two characteristics. The most sensitive feeling can have this characteristic more imperfectly than an accomplished painter without feeling, in such a way that the image that has impressed itself inwardly is vivid and clear but weakened when we try to imagine it precisely in part. This is similar to what happens when we consider the image of a beloved man who is\
far away. And as can be experienced with most things: going into the parts too closely makes one lose a sense of the whole. A merely mechanical painter however, whose primary work is portraiture, can heighten and strengthen his imagination through necessary practice, so that it becomes capable of fixing a clear image in all its parts in his memory and can repeat it piece by piece.\
This ability should be considered therefore to be a rare gift from Heaven that has thereby made the mind capable of enjoying the Beautiful and life itself, which bliss consists of a lasting pleasant feeling.\
Concerning the capacity for sensitivity to the beautiful in art, which is the second part of this treatise, a general suggestion can be made first, which can be more closely applied subsequently to the three fine arts after special considerations. This suggestion, however, like this essay in general, is not intended for young people who are learning just to earn sufficient for their daily bread and cannot think beyond that, which must be obvious, but for those who as well as having the capacity also have the means, opportunity, and leisure, the latter being especially necessary. For the contemplation of works of art is, as Pliny says, for people of leisure. That is to say, it is for those who are not condemned to work in a heavy infertile field. The leisure granted to me is one of the greatest joys that kind fate has allowed me to find in Rome through my most magnificent friend and lord, who, as long as I have lived together with him in his home, has not required me to make a single stroke of my pen. And this blessed leisure has provided me with circumstances in which I have been able to devote myself to contemplating art as much as I wish.\
My suggestion for teaching a boy who has shown signs of the desired capacity is as follows. First his heart and sensitivity should be roused in a moving way by explaining to him the most beautiful passages in ancient and modern writers, especially the poets, and they should be prepared for the contemplation of the Beautiful in all its forms, because this way leads to perfection. At the same time his eyes should become used to observing the Beautiful in art, which can be done in a basic way in all countries.\
At the beginning one should present him with ancient relief works together with ancient paintings engraved by Sante Bartoli,13 who indicated the beauty of these works truthfully and with good taste. After that the so-called Raphael\'92s Bible can be chosen. This is the history of the Old Testament, which this great painter partly painted himself and partly had executed according to his drawings on the vault of an open passageway in the Vatican Palace. This work was also engraved by the aforementioned Bartoli. These two works will serve the unspoiled eye, just as a correct model of writing serves the hand. And as unpracticed sensitivity is like ivy, which attaches itself just as easily to a tree as to an old wall, that is to say that it observes the good and bad with equal pleasure, so it should be applied to beautiful images. What Diogenes said is pertinent here: that\
we should ask the gods to provide us with pleasant phenomena. In a boy who has become enthusiastic about images by Raphael one will notice with time what someone feels, who, after having seen the Vatican Apollo and Laocoon in situ, looks immediately afterwards at statues of sainted monks in the church of St. Peter. For just as truth convinces without any proof, so the Beautiful, looked at since one\'92s youth, will provide the most excellent pleasure even without further teaching.\
This suggestion for initial teaching is primarily directed at young people like you, my friend, who have either been brought up in the countryside or have had no one to guide them in this knowledge. But for such people several opportunities can be provided. One should seek out Greek coins by Goltzius,14 which are the best drawn of all available. The contemplation and explanation of them is useful for our purpose and can teach one more. The most enjoyable and instructive occupation, however, is provided by looking at the casts of the best carved stones, of which there is a large collection in gypsum in Germany. A complete collection of all the beautiful objects of this kind cast in red sulphur can be found in Rome. My description of the carved stones in the Stoss collection can be useful in studying both the former and the latter. If someone wants to become involved with valuable works, then they should obtain the volume published by the Florentine Museum that contains such stones.\
If the boy who is to be introduced to the Beautiful is in a large city, where he can be given oral instruction, then at the beginning I would not make any different suggestion to him than I did to the former. But if his teacher should have the rare knowledge enabling him to distinguish between ancient and modern artists, then in addition to the casts of ancient stones a collection of casts of modern carved stones could be provided, in order to demonstrate from a comparison of the two the concept of the truly beautiful in the ancient ones and the erroneous concept of it in most of the modern works. Much can be shown and made comprehensible without instruction from drawings. For clarity grows through contrast, just as a mediocre singer can be identified when accompanied by a harmonious instrument, because his singing would sound different without it. Drawing, however, which can be taught alongside writing, provides more complete and thorough knowledge, when a certain skill has been attained in it.\
This private teaching through copper engravings and casts remains, however, like land surveying, just drawings on paper. A copy in reduced format is only a shadow and not the truth itself. The difference between Homer and his best translations is no greater than that between the works of the ancients and Raphael and reproductions of them. The latter are dead images, while the former speak to us. Thus a true and complete knowledge of the Beautiful in art cannot be gained in any other way than through contemplation of the original images themselves, which can be\
done primarily in Rome. And it is to be wished that those persons who are gifted by nature with a capacity to recognize the beautiful and have been adequately taught about the subject should undertake a journey to Italy. Without being in Rome one must be content, as many lovers have to be, with the glimpse of a sigh, that is to say with valuing highly small things and what is mediocre.\
It is well-known that for hundreds of years a considerable number of ancient works and paintings by famous masters have been taken away from Rome to other countries, especially to England. But one can be reassured that the best have remained in Rome, and presumably will remain there. The most distinguished collection of antiquities in England is that of the Earl of Pembroke in Wilton House, and included in this is everything collected by Cardinal Mazarin. One should not let oneself be led astray by the name of the artist Cleomenes on some of the statues however, just as one should not by the names with which some busts in Munich have been christened: if you really have a desire to do something, you\'92ll easily find a way to satisfy that desire.15 After this comes the collection at Arundell, in which the best work is a statue of a consul given the name Cicero. So there cannot be anything in the collection that might be called beautiful. One of the most beautiful statues in England is a Diana that Mr. Cook,16 former English minister in Florence, removed from Rome forty years ago. She is represented running and shooting an arrow, and it is of exceptional artistry. Nothing is missing from the statue except the head, which has been newly made in Florence.\
The best statue in France is the so-called Germanicus in Versailles, with the correct name of the artist Cleomenes. This figure is of no special beauty but appears to have been made from an ordinary live model. The Venus with the Beautiful Posterior, in the same place, and which is there regarded as a marvel, is probably a copy of the even more famous Venus with the same name in the Farnese Palace. But even the latter work can scarcely be placed even among second-rate statues, and what is more, it has a new head, which not everyone notices, not to mention the arms.\
In Spain, and in Aranjuez in particular, where the former Odescalchi collection17 is to be found, which belonged to Queen Christina, the best works are two really beautiful genii (which are generally called Castor and Pollux), and these are more beautiful than everything that can be found in France. Also to be found there is an extremely beautiful bust of Antinous, larger than life-size, and a wrongly named reclining Cleopatra, or sleeping nymph. The rest of this collection is mediocre, and the life-size muses have new heads made by Ercole Ferrata, by whose hand the whole of the Apollo statue was made.\
Germany is also not lacking in works of ancient art. But in Vienna there is nothing worth mentioning except for a beautiful marble vessel, of the same size and form as the famous vase in the Villa Borghese, with\
a bacchanalia worked in relief around it. This work was found in Rome and belonged to Cardinal Nicolo del Giudice, in whose palace in Naples it stood. The collection of ancient works made by Cardinal Polignac in Rome is in Charlottenburg near Berlin. The most famous of them are eleven figures that the former owner called The Family of Lycomedes, that is, Achilles dressed in women\'92s clothes and hidden among Lycomedes\'92s daughters. One should be aware, however, that all the outer parts of these figures, especially the heads, are new, and, what is the worst thing, were made by young beginners in the French Academy in Rome. The head of the so-called Lycomedes is an image of the famous Herr von Stosch. The best work there is a seated child made of metal, playing with bones, called astragali by the Greeks and tali by the Romans, and used instead of dice. The greatest treasury of antiquities is to found in Dresden. It consists of works from the Galleria Chigi in Rome, which King Augustus purchased for 60,000 scudi and enlarged with a collection of statues that Cardinal Alessandro Albani let him have for 10,000 scudi. However, I cannot provide details of the most excellent qualities of their beauty, because the best statues were standing in a shed made of boards, packed together like herrings, and could be seen but not studied. Some were placed more conveniently, and among these are three clothed female figures, which were the first discoveries at Herculaneum.\
There are no paintings by the great Raphael in England, except possibly the St. George of the Earl of Pembroke, which as far as I can recall is similar to the one in the gallery of the Duke of Orleans. The former was engraved by Pagot.18 In Hampton Court, however, there are cartoons by him for the same number of tapestries, which are stored safely in the church of St. Peter\'92s. These were engraved by Dorigny.19 Recently a drawing of the Transfiguration of Christ by this great master was sent as a gift by Lord Baltimore from Rome to the King of England, as large as the original, which will presumably be hung in the same place. The drawing was copied from the work itself and carried out with artistry it is difficult to imitate in black chalk. It is fixed to the paper in such a way that the drawing cannot be damaged. You know the artist who made it, my friend. It was Giovanni Casanova, the greatest draftsman in Rome after Mengs, his master, and we have contemplated and wondered at this very work more than once.\
In France, in Versailles to be precise, there is the famous Holy Family by Raphael, engraved by Edelinck,20 and later by Frey,21 together with a Saint Catherine. In the Escorial in Spain there are two works by his hand, one of which is a Madonna. In Germany there are two works: in Vienna [sic] the Saint Catherine and in Dresden the altarpiece from the monastery of San Sisto in Piacenza. But the latter is not in his best style, and unfortunately it is painted on canvas, while his other works in oil are on wood. That is why it had already suffered a lot of damage when it arrived from\
Italy. And though we might get some idea of it from the drawing, it would lack a sense of its coloring. A painting that is supposed to be a Raphael, which the King of Prussia had purchased for him a few years ago for 3,000 scudi, has not been recognized by any art expert here as his work. This is why no written testimony that it is genuine could be obtained.\
From this catalogue of the best works of ancient sculptors and Raphael\'92s paintings outside Rome and Italy the conclusion can be drawn that the Beautiful in art is only rarely to be found elsewhere, and that sensitivity to it can only become perfect, correct, and refined in Rome. This capital city of the world remains still today an inexhaustible source of beautiful artistic things, and more is discovered here in a month than in the buried towns near Naples in a year. After I had examined all the things of beauty from antiquity that remain in Rome for the treatise on Beauty in the history of art, I thought I would never find a more beautiful head of a male youth than the Apollo, the Borghese Genius, and the Medici Bacchus in Rome, and I was beside myself when I set my eyes on what was almost a higher form of Beauty in the face of a young faun with two small horns on his brow, which has recently been discovered after such a long time and is in the hands of the sculptor Cavaceppi.22 The nose is missing from it and part of the upper lip. What an impression this head would make if it were undamaged. One of the statues of antiquity that is the most perfect according to theory was discovered this year, 1763, near Albano in a vineyard belonging to Prince Altieri. It represents a young faun holding a large shell in front of the lower part of its body, from which water is running, and the figure is looking into it with its head inclined and its body stooping. The dancing faun in Florence looks hard compared with this one and it cannot be compared with any statue more reasonably than with the one described by me of the idolized Hercules. So in the future an Altieri faun will become famous, as the Borghese Gladiator and the Farnese Hercules are.\
After this general recommendation for teaching, attention should be paid to what is specifically beautiful about each of the three fine arts, painting, sculpture, and architecture, if it did not mean presenting arguments about this field at too great a length. In accordance with the limits of this work and with those imposed on me by other important tasks and duties, I must be satisfied with seeking out a few flowers and plants in this field.\
Understanding the Beautiful in these arts is more difficult in the first, easier in the second, and even easier in the third. But providing proof of the reason for something being beautiful is difficult in all these cases, and here the famous saying applies, that nothing is more difficult than proving an obvious truth that is understood by all through the aid of their senses.\
In architecture the beautiful is more general, because it is primarily a matter of proportion. For a building can become or be beautiful by this\
alone, without ornamentation. Sculpture does not possess two difficult aspects, that is, coloring and light and shade, which give rise to the greatest Beauty in painting. There are therefore different stages: it is easier to master and understand one form of art rather than another. For this reason Bernini, without any feeling for human beauty, could become a great architect, though he did not deserve such praise for his sculpture. The latter is so related to the senses that I am surprised that there are some people who have had doubts about whether painting or sculpture is the more difficult. For the fact that there have been fewer good sculptors than painters in modern times makes it impossible to doubt this. It follows from this that, as the Beautiful in architecture is directed more toward one thing than in the two other arts, the sensitivity for it in these must be rarer, for it is rare in the former, as is revealed even in Rome itself in the newest buildings. Among the latter, few have been completed according to the rules of true Beauty, as those by Vignola23 were without exception. In Florence beautiful architecture is rare, and as a result only one small house, which the Florentines themselves point out as a landmark, can be called beautiful. The same can be said of Naples. But Venice outdoes both these cities with various palaces on the Grand Canal, which were built by Palladio. From Italy one can draw one\'92s own conclusions concerning other countries. But in Rome there are more beautiful palaces and houses than in the whole of the rest of Italy: the most beautiful building in our times is the villa of Cardinal Alessandro Albani, and the hall in it can be described as the most beautiful and splendid in the world.\
The essence of the Beautiful in architecture is to be found in the most beautiful building in the world. Which is St. Peter\'92s. The shortcomings that Campbell,24 in his Vitruvius Britcmnicus, and others have found appear to be from hearsay and have no foundation in the least. The front side has been found fault with, with the claim that its openings and sections are not in a suitable proportion to the size of the building. But consideration has not been paid to the fact that these supposed shortcomings have come about necessarily due to the balcony from which the Pope usually gives his blessing, as he does in the churches of St. John Lateran and Santa Maria Maggiore. The Attic order on this side is no higher than it is on the whole building. The supposed main mistake is that Carlo Maderna, the architect of the front side, brought it out too far, and instead of making it a Greek cross, in which case the cupola would have been in the middle, gave the temple the form of a Latin cross. But he was ordered to do this, in order to incorporate the entire area of the old church into the new building. This extension was already drafted by Raphael, in his capacity as architect of St. Peter\'92s before Michelangelo, which can be seen from his groundplan in Serlio\'92s25 work, and Michelangelo seems to have had the same intention, as his groundplan in Bonanni\'92s26 work reveals. It was also to have the form of a Greek cross, which was against the rules of the\
ancient architects, who teach us that the width of a temple should be kept to one third of its length.\
In ancient works of sculpture the first thing that has to be learned in practicing sensibility for the Beautiful is how to distinguish what is ancient from what is modern in the same figure. The lack of this knowledge has misled many would-be experts and writers, for it is not so easy in all cases as it is with the completions made to the statues in the Giustiniani Palace, which are also loathed by beginners in matters of good taste. Here I am talking about the additions to the figures themselves, for the symbols attached to them cannot be said to reveal sensitivity to the Beautiful. All the writers deceived themselves concerning the Farnese ox, finding nothing modern about it. But a feeling for the Beautiful should have at least raised doubts among them concerning as many as half the figures in this work. With nudes not everything is beautiful (for in the ancient past there were also good and bad artists, as Plato says in Cratylus), but there is also little that is imperfect and bad. And as we consider that which has the least imperfections to be perfect in our nature, so many of the figures of the ancients can be considered beautiful in this sense. But the abstract and merely Beautiful must be clearly distinguished from expressiveness in Beauty. The Vatican Apollo has a face of the latter kind, and the Borghese Genius is of the former kind. The head of the Apollo is only fitting for an annoyed and displeased deity. The clothing on ancient figures can be called beautiful in its way, just like nudity. For all their garments are good and well hung, and not all were modeled on wet clothes, as is generally and mistakenly claimed. These are the fine garments that lie close to the skin and have small slight folds. So those modern artists who in historical works have depicted other garments, which never existed, instead of those of the ancients, cannot be excused for this reason.\
Concerning relief works among the ancients, some writers who are only able to speak of their works in the way that pilgrims talk of Rome have found fault with the fact that all the figures have the same level of relief, without any artistic deviation, which would require various depths and widths. They take this as a proven point, and conclude that it is due to a lack of skill, as though it were more difficult to indicate form on a flat surface than in relief. These should be told that there is much they do not know. Works do exist that have three different kinds of deviation and relief-work in the figures. One such stands in the splendid hall of the Villa Albani. In the works of modern sculptors one has to depart from the general rule: in this case one cannot always draw a conclusion about the master from his work. For example, the statue of Saint Dominicus in the garments of his order in St. Peter\'92s provided an almost insurmountable challenge for the skilled Le Gros to make it beautiful.\
Beauty in painting is to be found as much in the draftsmanship and composition as in the coloring and in light and shade. With draftsmanship\
Beauty is the touchstone, also for that which is intended to awaken fear: for that which deviates from beautiful form can be taught but not described as beautiful. Various figures in Raphael\'92s Banquet of the Gods are not successful according to this principle. But this work was executed by his pupils, among whom Giulio Romano, who was his favorite, did not possess a feeling for the truly Beautiful. When the school of Raphael, the appearance of which had been only the light of dawn, came to its end, artists no longer considered antiquity and, as they had done previously, went their own presumptuous way. The rot began with the two Zuccharis, and Giuseppe d\'92Arpino27 blinded himself and others. Almost fifty years after Raphael the school of the Carraccis began to flourish, the founder of which, Ludovico, the older of them, saw Rome for only fourteen days, and as a result could not do as well as his cousins, especially Annibale, in drawing. They were eclectics and attempted to combine the purity of the ancients and Raphael, the knowledge of Michelangelo, the richness and abundance of the Venetian School, especially of Paolo, with the joyousness of Correggio\'92s Lombardian brushwork. Domenichino, Guido, Guercino, and Albano learned in the school of Agostino and Annibale and attained the same fame as their masters, but must be considered to be imitators.\
Domenichino studied the ancients more than all the successors of the Carracci, and did not set to work before he had drawn even the smallest parts, as can be demonstrated from eight great volumes of his drawings in the museum of Cardinal Alessandro Albani, which are now in the possession of the King of England. But in his nudes he did not attain the purity of Raphael. Guido was not constant, either in drawing or in execution. He recognized Beauty but he did not always accomplish it. His Apollo in the famous Aurora is nothing but just a beautiful figure, and in contrast to Mengs\'92s Apollo among the Muses in the Villa Albani, it is like a vassal contrasted with his lord. The head of his archangel is beautiful, but not ideal. He relinquished his early strong coloring and adopted a bright, flat kind, lacking strength. Guercino did not demonstrate his ability primarily in nudes and did not tie himself to the strict style of Raphael\'92s drawing and that of the ancients, whose garments and customs he observed and imitated in few of his works. His images are noble but also drafted according to his own ideas, and so he can be called an original artist more than those mentioned previously. Albani is the painter of the Graces, but these are not the highest ones to which the ancients made sacrifices, but the lesser ones. His heads are more pleasing than beautiful. Following the hints given here it is possible to attempt to make one\'92s own judgments about the Beauty of individual figures in the works of other painters who deserve it.\
The Beauty of composition depends on wisdom; that is to say, it should resemble a gathering of civilized and wise persons and not wild and unruly\
spirits like those of la Fage. The second characteristic is thoroughness, that is to say, there should be nothing pointless or empty about it, nothing should be included as happens in verse for the sake of the rhyme, so that the secondary figures do not appear like grafted scions but like branches from the stem. The third characteristic is the avoidance of repetition in actions and poses, which reveal a poverty of ideas and carelessness. Very large compositions should not be admired as such. Mechanistic artists, or those who can fill up large areas swiftly with figures, such as Lanfranc, whose cupolas contain many hundreds of figures, are like many writers published in folio form. We know, as Phaedrus says, that\
Plus esse in uno saepe, quam in turba, boni.28\
Large numbers and good quality rarely go together, and the man who wrote to his friend \'93I did not have time to express myself more briefly\'94 knew that it is not a large quantity but a small amount that is difficult. Tiepolo produces more in one day than Mengs in a week, but the work of the former is seen and forgotten, while that of the latter stays with you forever. First study thoroughly the great works in all their aspects, such as The Last Judgment by Michelangelo, for which many of the first sketches for individual figures by his own hand and many other sketches can be found among the former AJbani collection of drawings, which now belongs to the English king, or such as Constantine\'92s Battle by Raphael, preliminary studies for which we can look at in no less wonderment, such as one of the hero being shown the battlefield by Pallas as in Homer. Then after this we will have a complete artistic scheme before us. An explanation of the points made above is provided by Alexander\'92s Battle against Porus by Pietro da Cortona, on the Campidoglio, which is a jumble of quickly drafted and executed small figures, and which is generally presented as a marvel and regarded as such, the more so because legend has it that Louis XIV offered the house of Savelli, where this work was, 20,000 scudi for it. These lies can be compared to his offer of 100,000 louis for Correggio\'92s Night.\
All coloring acquires its beauty through diligent application, for the many variations in colors and the intermediate tints cannot be found and fixed quickly. No great painters have worked quickly, and the school of Raphael, indeed all great colorists, made their works to be observed up close. Recent Italian painters, among whom Carlo Maratta is the most distinguished, carried out their work quickly and were satisfied if their works had a general effect. Thus they lose a lot if you try to study them more closely for a long time. It must have been in relation to these painters that the German saying arose: \'93It looks beautiful from a distance, like Italian paintings.\'94 I distinguish here between fresco paintings and others that are not finely executed, because the former are intended to\
have an effect from afar, while diligently completed and tarted-up paintings that have been meticulously and tentatively produced, recommend themselves more by their diligence than by real knowledge. The former reveal certainty and confidence however, and the free use of the brush loses nothing close up and has a more extensive effect than the others. Of such a kind is the crown of all paintings in miniature in the world, to be found in the Albani Palace, that is the famous Transfiguration of Christ by Raphael, which many consider to be the work of this master himself, but some ascribe to his pupils. Of the latter kind is a Deposition from the Cross by Van der Werff in the same place, one of his best works, which the artist created for the Elector of the Palatinate as a gift to Pope Clemens XI. In the coloring of nudes Correggio and Titian are the masters above all others, for their flesh is true and lifelike. Rubens, who is not ideal in his drawing, is so in this respect. His flesh looks like the redness in fingers that one holds up against the sun, and his coloring can be contrasted with that of the other two artists, as genuine porcelain can be contrasted with a transparent composition on glass.\
In the matter of light and shade few works by Caravaggio and Spagnoletto can be considered beautiful, for they go against the nature of light. The reason for their dark shadows is the principle that opposites placed next to each other become more apparent, as does white skin next to dark clothes. But nature does not work according to this principle. It proceeds in stages, also in the case of light, shadow, and darkness. Before day comes the dawn and before night, twilight. Pedants of painting tend to value this dark style of art, as those in the world of learning do a few writers in smoky old rooms. But an enthusiast for art who has become aware of a feeling for Beauty in himself and does not possess sufficient knowledge will become full of doubts when he hears supposed experts praising paintings, while in his own mind he is thinking the opposite. If such a person has studied the works of the best masters, and thus he has acquired some meager experience, then he can let his eyes and feeling be his rule, rather than a declaration that does not convince him. For there are people who only praise that which displeases others, in order to place themselves far above common opinion, like the famous Maffei, who had only an insufficient knowledge of Greek and rated the dark and forced style of Nicander29 as the equal of Homer\'92s, in order to say something disturbing and have it believed that he had read and understood his hero. Enthusiasts can be assured, that if it were not necessary to get to know the styles of certain masters, such as the paintings of Luca Giordano,30 of Preti da Calabrese, and of Solimena, and of the Neapolitan painters in general, it is hardly worth spending time examining them. The same can be said of the modern Venetian painters, especially Piazzetta.\
To this instruction on the sensitivity to the Beautiful in art I shall add the following reminders. One should be attentive above all to a few\
unusual thoughts in works of art, which occur sometimes like valuable pearls in a string of poorer quality ones, and can easily be overlooked among them. Our observation should begin with the effects of understanding, as the most worthy aspect of beauty, and come down to its execution. This is especially to be noted in the case of Poussin\'92s work, in which the eye is not stimulated by the coloring and can thus overlook the most important value of it. He represented the words of the apostle, \'93I have fought a good fight,\'94 in a painting of the Extreme Unction, by a shield over the bed of the dying man, on which stands the name of Christ, as it did on ancient Christian lamps. And below this hangs a quiver, which can allude to the arrows of the villain. The plague of Philistines in secret places is expressed by two figures who stretch out their hands to the sick man and hold their noses. A noble thought is expressed by the thirsting stag near the water in the famous Io by Correggio, which is taken from the words of the psalmist, \'93As the stag cries . . .\'94 etc., and represents a pure image of the urgent desire of Jupiter, for the stag\'92s crying means in Hebrew also to desire something longingly and urgently. The Fall of the First Man by Domenichino in the Galleria Colonna is beautifully conceived. The Almighty, carried by a choir of angels, reproaches Adam for his offence. The latter casts the blame on Eve, and Eve casts it on the serpent, which crawls under her. These figures are placed in stages, just as the action is, in a chain leading from one action to the other.\
The second reminder is to observe nature. Art, as an imitator of it, must always seek what is natural in order to create the Beautiful, and as far as possible avoid everything that is forceful, because even Beauty as found in life can cause displeasure through forced gestures. Just as much appropriate knowledge in a written text must yield to clear and distinct teaching, so must art yield to nature, and the former should be evaluated according to the latter. Great artists have acted in contradiction of this principle, the first among them being Michelangelo, who, to show how learned he was, overlooked the impropriety of the figures on the graves of the grand dukes. For this reason one should not seek Beauty in cases of severe foreshortening, for these are like the calculated short forms of Descartes\'92s geometry, and hide what should be visible. They can provide proof of skill in drawing but not of a knowledge of Beauty.\
The third reminder concerns execution. As this cannot be the primary and most important thing to attend to, one should look beyond signs of affectation, just as one should beautiful details, for in this respect artists from the Tirol who have carved the entire Lord\'92s Prayer on a cherry stone can compete with all other artists. But in cases where secondary details have been executed just as diligently as the main subject, such as the plants in the foreground of the Transfiguration of Christ, this reveals the uniformity of thought and effect in the artist, who like the Creator wishes to appear great and beautiful even in the smallest thing. Maffei,\
who claims, although wrongly, that the ancient stone carvers knew how to make the deep parts of their hollowed-out figures more smooth than modern carvers, must have paid attention more to small details in art than to what was essential. The smoothness of the marble is therefore not a quality of the statue, like the smoothness of a garment, but at most it is like the smoothness of the sea. For statues, indeed some of the most beautiful ones, have not been made smooth.\
For the purposes of this essay, which is intended to be of a general nature, it is sufficient that this is taken into consideration. The greatest clarity cannot be given to things that are based on sensitivity, and in this context everything cannot be taught in writing, as is proved by among other things the distinguishing features that Argenville,31 in his Lives of the Painters, believes he has provided of their drawings. In this situation there is one thing to do: go and see for yourself. And my wish is that you will come again, my friend. You promised this to me, as I carved your name in the bark of a splendid and leafy oak tree in Frascati, where in your company I recalled my misspent youth and made an offering to Genius. Remember this occasion and your friend. Enjoy your beautiful youth in noble amusement and far from the foolishness of the courts, so that you may live in the way you wish, and give birth to sons and grandchildren in your image.\
On Architecture\
Remarks on the Architecture of the Old Temples at Agrigento in Sicily (1759)\
These remarks will not appear superficial to those who know the great work of Giuseppe Pancrazi,1 in which Sicilian antiquities are explained, because he reports very little or not at all on the architecture of the temples and buildings he has reproduced as copper engravings. Wise scholars do not like to depart from their fixed track. For this reason Canon Mazzocchi,2 one of the foremost scholars of our time, in his merely scholarly treatise on Paestum, which together with other works is included with his explanation of the Hercules tablets, passes over in silence the temples at Paestum as though they did not exist, but I shall mention them in passing.\
Giusseppe Pancrazi, of the Theatine order, is still living in Cortona, in Tuscany, his homeland, but outside his order and remote from the world, because of feebleness of mind, the cause of which is attributed to the miscalculations he had made in disputing the costs of his work, miscalculations concerning the generosity of those Englishmen to whom he had dedicated the copper plates. This was because, lacking experience of the world, he had taken the very idea of this nation to be synonymous with magnanimity.\
His intention was to make a large extensive work, and for this purpose he had arranged for the supposed letters of Phalaris to be printed in their entirety and made them the basis for his history of the city of Akragas, called Agrigentum by the Romans, and now known as Agrigento. He based his work on the evidence of Dodwell,3 who, in spite of it being highly improbable, considers these letters to be genuine. I do not believe that the author could have read Bentley\'92s4 most recent treatise, written in English, on these letters, especially as this book is very rare in Italy. For I do not think one could find any further objections to raise against such a scholarly examination.\
It is not my intention to write a critique of the antiquities of Sicily, but only to provide a few reports on the Doric architecture of the most ancient times, especially as Vitruvius and those who have come after him do not teach us anything about the most ancient forms of it. Whoever wished to write a history of Greek architecture from an artistic point of view would, in making use of Vitruvius, have to make a leap from the ways in which it is necessary to build huts and houses to the times of the\
most decorative architecture. To fill this gap I will try to add a few pieces of evidence, but I must restrict myself to those that can be explained and understood without copper engravings. My circumstances have not permitted me to see the antiquities of Agrigento myself, and I am basing my remarks on some reports communicated to me by a Scottish enthusiast for architecture, Mr. Robert Mylne,5 who examined the remains of the old buildings in Sicily diligently and went back to his homeland a short time ago.\
Some measurements that I shall provide are based on the English foot, which can easily be calculated roughly according to other measurements. The English foot is smaller than the ancient Greek one, but the difference is very small. The English foot, which has twelve inches, is smaller than the Greek foot by 875/10,000, or eight hundred and seventy-five ten-thousandths, of an inch. The Parisian foot is larger than the English one by 8160/10,000, or eight thousand one hundred and sixty ten thousandths, of an inch. If one divides the Parisian foot into ten thousand parts, then the Greek foot has 9,431 of its parts. This precise definition was conveyed to me by Mr. Henry, esq.,6 an Irishman known for his great journeys, from his corrected version of the relationship of the measurements in Arbuthnot\'92s7 tables. This gentleman has been living in Florence for some years.\
The so-called Temple of Concordia is without doubt one of the oldest Greek buildings in the world, and the exterior has been preserved undamaged. The author, who has explained the Sicilian antiquities, provides the ground plan and elevations of it, but he does not become involved in describing any of the items, for the man whose services he made use of for drawing reserved this activity for himself. But the latter, who had never had any experience of architecture, must have found it difficult to reveal anything.\
This temple has the Doric type of construction, and what is called hexastylos peripteros, which means that all around it rests on a sequence of free-standing columns, of which there are six at the front and the same number at the back, which form the pronaos and opisthodomos, two free hallways, one at the entrance and the other at the back. On both sides there are eleven columns, or thirteen, if the corner columns are counted twice. This temple looks exactly like two of the temples at Paestum on the Gulf of Salerno from the outside, and both these and the former seem to be of the same antiquity. There already existed reports about the temple at Agrigento, but not until ten years ago was there any mention of those at Paestum, although they had never been buried but had always been visible on a large uninhabited area of the seashore. The lack of any report about these buildings was therefore the reason why no Doric works were known outside Greece other than the lowest columns of the Theater of Marcellus in the Amphitheater of Vespasian in Rome and one arch in Verona.\
Fijj. 4. The Concordia Temple at Ajjrijjento, Sicily. Photo by Berthold Werner, Wikimedia Commons.\
The [height of the] columns on the temple in Agrigento together with their capitals at the top make up not quite five times the diameter of the lowest ends of the columns, like those at Paestum. Vitruvius fixes the height of Doric columns at seven times the diameter, or fourteen moduli, which is the same, for one modulus is half the diameter of the column. But as this writer attempted to base the proportions of architecture, as with human beings, on mysterious aspects of certain numbers and partly on the notion of harmony, he could give no other reason for its being seven times the diameter than the holy nature of the number seven, which is just a fantasy, in the same way as those modern thinkers who talk about the seventh in music. One could provide an apparent reason for it being six times the diameter of a column from the proportion of a foot, which was considered by the very oldest sculptors to be one sixth the height of a figure. The reason for the height of the columns of which we are speaking here is to be found in the plan of the temple and not in the columns themselves. For its proportions cannot be fixed in whole numbers of diameters, for what is more than four times the diameter can be expressed in feet and inches. I find that the height of the columns is equal to the width of the temple, which in Doric temples was always half the length of either the whole temple or of the cella alone. Thus it was not a question of bringing to bear some scholarly proportion derived from something external to the building but it was to be found in the nature of the building itself.\
Fig. 5. The Concordia Temple at Agrigento, showing features of a Doric temple. Adapted by Aithinaios, 2007, from original image by Lnca Pastorini, 2005. Wikimedia Commons.\
If a passage in Pliny is to be understood in the way that it reads, namely that in the most ancient times the height of the columns was a third of the width of the temple, then the columns must have been shorter than the width. For if we fix the length of a temple at 50 feet and thus the width at 25, then the columns would be 8 feet. And if we assume the diameter of the columns to be 2 feet, then they would be only 4 times the diameter.\
These columns have a conical tapering, the reason for which is due not so much to the measurements as to their purpose. For a cylindrical form with a diameter that was the same at the bottom as at the top would have meant there was a danger of the stones, of which a column consists, splitting and breaking apart, as the weight of the beam would have fallen primarily on the axis of the cylinder. The cylindrical tapering however combined the load-bearing points into one. The columns have grooves in the Doric style, which is to say that two hollows are closed by a sharp edge [fig. 6a], while on Ionic and Corinthian grooved columns the edges are flat [fig. 6b].\
Figs. 6a and 6b. Hand-drawn Doric style grooves (left) and Ionic- and Corinthian-stylegrooves (right).\
The beam of this temple consists, as with others, of three components: the architrave immediately over the columns, the frieze, and the cornice. Vitruvius asserts that the height of the components of the beam\
should be determined according to the length or shortness of the columns, and some modern architects make the architrave not much more than half the size of the frieze. But at the height of the period of antiquity nothing was known of either the first or the second of these rules. For on the temple at Agrigento the beam is large and splendid, and stronger than was required by the height of the columns. And to the eye the architrave and the frieze seem to be of the same height. It is also probable, it seems, that it can be concluded from the size of the beam on the Temple of Jupiter at Olympus that the cornice is a third the height of the frieze.\
The proportions of the triglyphs and the metopes, or the rectangular space between them, is the same as in other examples of the Doric order. But because no complete Doric building has been preserved in Rome, one can see on those temples only the exception among the ancients to the symmetry in relation to the triglyphs over the columns at the corners, which are not placed on the middle of these columns but are pressed against the corner of the frieze, so as not to leave the corner bare. The triglyphs on these temples are not fixed on the frieze but embodied in it, and in one temple at Paestum all except one are missing and were probably removed in barbarian times.\
As the triglyphs over the four corner columns have been pressed against the sharp edge of the frieze, the metopes attached to them are somewhat larger than the others. But it does not appear to the eye to be so, because the columns close to the corner stand closer together than those in the middle, so that the intercolumniations of the first three columns from that corner are smaller than the following ones, with the difference, however, that the first space is smaller than the second and this smaller than the third. This variation cannot be found through the eye however, but only by measuring it. It can be deduced that the reason why the corner columns stand closer together is to ensure the strength of the building.\
The five large openings, round at the top, that are to be found on the sides of the temple instead of windows at Agrigento, have been broken through in later times, as can be clearly seen. Presumably this was done by the Saracens, who according to reports made use of this temple. For the rectangular temples of the ancients generally had no other light than that which came through the doors.\
The frames of the doors on the temple in Agrigento have been removed, like those at Paestum. But they were probably narrower at the top than at the bottom, as Vitruvius prescribed for Doric doors. In another small temple in Agrigento, known by the local inhabitants as the Chapel of Phalaris, the door has been made in this way. The draftsman who worked for Giuseppe Pancrazi covered this with a tree, for some reason I do not understand, so that its form cannot be seen on the copper engraving (vol.2, plate 14). This door was walled up by the\
monks, and on the opposite side, where there was no door, one has been broken through. Why? Because the altar must stand facing a certain part of the world.\
This style of doors was not, as might appear from Vitruvius, unique to the Doric style of building, but they seem to have been made in this way many times during the high period of antiquity. It is certainly true of the Egyptians, as can be seen on the doors on the Tablet of Isis and on some Egyptian cut stones. The reason for this was to ensure strength. For the weight and pressure of the building does not fall only on top of the doors, but there is also pressure from both sides on the slanted doorposts.\
The decorations on the temple in Agrigento and on those in Paestum are, as was generally the case in the most ancient times, large and simple. The ancients sought that greatness that constitutes true magnificence. That is why the various parts of these temples are extremely prominent and are much stronger than in Vitruvius\'92s time or as he himself taught. A style that is the complete opposite to that of the ancients can be seen on those buildings in Florence and Naples which were built not long before the restoration of art. For as in Italy they always had a better understanding than elsewhere of the ancient style of building, there arose a blend of the latter and the taste of the times. The moldings and the cornices projected unnoticeably, because they attempted to find beauty in small details. Simplicity consists among other things in there being little excess. That is why one can see on our modern temples neither hollow moldings nor semi-circular ledges, but everything is made in almost straight lines, with the exception of one part of the capital, which is decorated generally with so-called egg-shapes, but which is exaggerated by an almost imperceptible roundness on the temples at Paestum and does not have the egg-shapes. The oldest altars and gravestones have been made in this style (conf. Fabretti Inscr. c. 3. p. 239 [n. 637.] c. 10. p. 696. n. 172),8 and this fact reveals how very ancient they are.\
Among the ruins of the former city of Agrigentum Giuseppe Pancrazi was primarily seeking to discover the Temple of the Olympian Jupiter, which he found indicated by the largest pile of stones and the name traditionally given to it and retained by the local inhabitants. There was nothing else to be seen, according to his report, and no idea of the plan or the actual size of it could be determined. All that was found were a triglyph, as an indication of the Doric style of building, and hollow parts on some stones in the form of a horseshoe, which, in his opinion, could have been used to raise them up more easily. He provides us with the report by Diodorus9 on this temple and then continues. Fazello10 also tells us no more than this.\
According to Diodorus\'92s report this temple was the largest in Sicily and could be compared with all others outside the island for its size. He provides the measurements for the length, width, and height of it and for the diameter of the columns.\
Fig. 7. The ruins of the Temple of the Olympian Zeus (referred to by Winckelmann as Temple of the Olympian Jupiter), Ajjrijjento. Photograph 2006 by Clemensfranz, Wikimedia Commons.\
The entire plan of the foundations of this temple is still there for all to see, but surrounded with the piled-up ruins of it, beyond which that interpreter of Sicilian antiquities and his companions will not have looked. These ruins enclose a free area covered with grass, which reveals the plan of the temple so clearly that in some places one can still see the steps, which went all round the temple. The foundation can also be seen excavated to a depth of one cubit.\
The length of this area corresponds to the measurement mentioned by Diodorus, which fixes the length of the temple at 340 feet. This is 345 feet in English measurement, as this is somewhat smaller than the Greek, as I have indicated. The width of the area is 165 feet, which does not correspond to Diodorus\'92s measurement of 60 feet.\
But if the width of a temple was half of its length, and 170 is half of 340, then the present measurement of the width, which cannot be so precise because of the ruins, comes very close to this proportion. Consequently Diodorus\'92s measurement of the width as 60 feet cannot be correct, and a hundred is missing in front of the number sixty. The least consideration of the proportions determined by the ancients for their temples would have aroused some doubts about the correctness of the Greek text, but this occurred to no one. The ancient manuscripts I have\
looked at in Rome and Florence, going back to the oldest by Diodorus in the library of the House of Chigi in Rome, agree with the printed reports. One should not imagine that the Greeks, in the manner of a certain newly built main church in Germany, would have put up a temple whose width was one sixth of its length.\
The height of this temple, without counting the height of the steps around it (xcoqu; xot) XQT|7ii56|i|iaToq), was one hundred and twenty feet. KQT|7ii5co|ia was not understood by the translators, for it was taken to mean foundation. The new French translator tried to reason here in an over-subtle way and betrayed his ignorance. He believes that it is the cornice that is meant in this context. Why? Because for him 5d>|ia is assumed to mean the highest part of a house, for which he should have offered some proof. According to him the cornice was not covered by a vault, as we all know, and Greek temples, which were not round, did not have a vault, as far as is known.\
The columns were round on the outside and rectangular on the inside, in the words of Diodorus, which the Latin translation keeps to with the same degree of brevity. \'93Rectangular on the inside\'94 could mean that the columns inside the wall were rectangular: a piece of a semicircular column made of porphyry with its other half rectangular can be found in Bolsena. But my opinion is rather that Diodorus meant to say that this temple had semicircular columns on the outside and pilasters on the inside.\
Vitruvius does not recall there being among the many kinds of temples a single one with semicircular columns. And there is no report among other writers of an ancient Greek building of this type. Among temples the worst of all the works with such columns is the one to For tuna Virilis, also known as Santa Maria Egiziaca, in Rome. The Theater of Marcellus and the Amphitheater of Vespasianus also have semicircular columns.\
Diodorus provides us with a vivid image of the size of the columns on the Temple of Jupiter when he reports that a human being could stand in a single one of their hollow grooves (5id^vopa), of which there must be twenty on a Doric column. The width of the grooves on the other pieces amounts to two Roman palms or spans and four and a half inches, a comfortable measure for the breadth of a human being. Pancrazi complains that he cannot find any trace of this temple. Examples of the size of grooved columns from antiquity in Rome are the three free-standing columns with their entablature on the Campo Vaccino, which are 41 Roman feet and five inches in height and 4 feet and 14 inches in diameter. But the width of the grooves is not even half that of the ones mentioned before, for it is only one full span. The largest columns on Greek buildings apart from those in Agrigento were on a temple in Cyzicus, which had a girth of four Dqyvai or \'93fathoms\'94 (one Dqyva is equivalent to six Greek feet). And these columns are each said to be made of one piece (Strabo, L. 14, p.941).\
The columns of the Temple of Agrigento were not, however, made from complete blocks but assembled from dissimilar and, to judge by the proportions of the whole, small pieces, and this is the reason why their remains do not catch the eye at first glance.\
The entablature on the columns consisted of three huge blocks of stone, one laid on top of the other, to make a whole. The architrave and frieze were of the same height as those on the temple, as described previously, and each of these two parts was ten English feet high. The cornice, of which nothing has been preserved, would have been about eight feet high. The triglyphs were here also, as I have indicated before, incorporated into the frieze and made from one piece that was ten feet high. A few of them have been preserved among the ruins. A single capital has remained whole and is made from one piece, but to measure it one would have to use a ladder.\
The measurements cited correspond to the height of the temple given by Diodorus, and the diameter of the columns, together with the measurement of the entablature indicated, when compared with the height of 120 feet, which is the height of the temple, lead us to a determination of the height of the columns. These can not have been as low as those on the Temple of Concordia and at Paestum, nor can they have had the height of the Doric columns in Vitruvius, which is seven times the diameter. For to make the measurements indicated comparable with the height of the temple, the columns cannot be any more or less than six times the diameter. The diameter of the columns was twelve feet, according to Diodorus, and six times twelve makes seventy-two. The architrave and the frieze would have twenty English feet and the cornice about eight. The height of the columns and the entablature together would be about a hundred feet. This would leave twenty feet remaining of the whole height measured up to the tip of the pediment. For the pediment or top of the portal was low in the most ancient times, as is shown on the other temple in Agrigento and the one in Paestum, on which it has been preserved.\
From this it would follow that they must have proceeded step by step from the determination of the height of the columns to the width of the temple, as indicated above, from six times the diameter and finally from seven. In the days when Greece was flourishing, thereforea it seems that the proportion for the height of Doric columns was six times the diameter. In the 93rd Olympiad the Carthaginians came to Sicily for the second time, and Agrigento was destroyed by them. Because of this war, Diodorus says, the temple was not completed.\
As I believe I have shown, it is probable that the columns of this temple can have been neither less nor more than six times their diameter in height. Thus the temple of Theseus in Athens, which is older and was built shortly after the Battle of Marathon, cannot have had columns, to\
judge by their shafts, of seven times the diameter, which Pococke11 claims for these and all the other Doric buildings in Athens.\
The temple that we are discussing must have been hexastyle, which means that it had six columns in front. For six columns with a diameter of twelve feet make 72 feet, and five intercolumnia, each of them calculated as three moduli or one and a half times the diameter of the columns, make ninety feet, which is altogether 162, which corresponds to a width of 160 feet, less two feet.\
Some traces of the mechanics employed in erecting this temple can be found on some of the large stones of the entablature. These traces consist of certain hollowing in the form of a horseshoe, as I have mentioned, on both the narrow ends of the stones. A rope or chain [fig. 8] was pulled tighdy into this hollow and drawn together tighdy above from both sides as these great loads were raised up. By this means the stones were pushed close together without the use of any lifting equipment, and when the stones were lying next to each other, the rope was pulled out, and the end of the incision, which was open at the top, was then closed with a piece of wood, so that no moisture could get into it. A piece of wood in one of these incisions in the hollows has been preserved fresh and firm for over two thousand years up to the present. Among the drawings of old buildings by the famous Giuilano da san Gallo12 in the Barberini Library I have seen a similar incision on the ends of stones, but a rectangular one, among the ruins of the Temple of Venus in Epidaurus in Greece. This way of raising heavy loads of stones and placing them in position immediately while lifting them is very much preferable to the instruction by Vitruvius (L.lO.c.5); and the sacks of sand mentioned by Pliny, according to Poleni\'92s interpretation (Dissertazione sopra al tempio di Diana d\'92Efeso, \'a719) appear ludicrous by comparison.\
It can be seen here how natural the way of achieving things was among the ancients, and the modern world does not seem to have reached the same level as the ancients in the field of mechanics, for all its constructiveness and calculation of the forces of motion. One only has to consider the huge obelisks: the whole world is full of the reports about the measures taken by Fontana under Pope Sixtus V to erect an obelisk, but among the ancients no word is to be found about how they erected\
things. How preferable the most natural and easiest ways in mechanics are to all those mechanisms and cogs worked out by scholars, devices that are not required by the nature of the tasks, has been shown in our own times by Zabaglia13 in Rome, who was a man without any learning and could neither read nor write. By himself and from a spirit of original invention he created tools that did not seem to be anything significant but that astonished people with their effects. And he accomplished things that never even occurred to other architects.\
As the Temple of Jupiter about which we are talking was not completed, so it happened with time that houses were built very close by the temple. And finally the temple was completely surrounded by other buildings. This is how the words of Diodorus are to be understood, which, it seems to me, no one has understood: TOv allow f| jisyQi xoixcov xoug vswg oixo5o|iouvtcov, fj xuxAxboi long oixoug 7i8QdapPav6vTC0v. The Latin translation of the first phrase is: Cum alii ad parietes usque templa edu-cant. Instead of xoug vsdjg it should be read xoi) vsd) and translated as: Cum alii ad parietes usque temple aedificiis fabricandis accederent. In the second phrase Henri Estienne14 and Rhodomann15 read xiooi (columnis) instead of Rox^cboi (in circuitu). Wesseling tries to retain both words, and believes it should be read as xuxAxp xiooi or xox^cboi xiovcov. In this case I keep to the printed text, and the reader who is proficient in languages will be able to perceive here, without going to great academic lengths, whether these scholars have understood the text and which explanation is to be preferred. The French translator leaps over this passage as lightly as a dancer.\
* * *\
This short treatise can give one cause to draw one\'92s own conclusions about the careless way the remaining buildings in Greece have been examined. A temple such as the one at Sunium, on the Attic peninsular, which has 17 columns, deserves more attention than can be found in Fourmont\'92s16 report of his journey in Greece (Memoire de PAcademie des Inscriptions, vol. 7, p. 244, para. 4). It all depends on how you look at things. Spon and the most scholarly travelers have primarily sought out inscriptions and old books. Kliiver and Holste17 considered ancient geography, and others had different ultimate goals. They were not concerned about art. There likewise remains much to be said about the ancient works of architecture in and around Rome. Desgodetz18 has made measurements; someone else must provide us with instruction through general commentaries and rules.\
\'92AXka xi xolo5\'92 87nxei|u\'92, oboei gsya %Qfjha xi nqaoocov.\
Empedocles. Agrigentini. ex Laertio19\
Rome.\
Preliminary Report on Remarks on the Architecture of the Ancients (1762)\
I owe the public an explanation concerning the History of the Art and Especially the Sculpture of Ancient Peoples, Primarily of the Greeks, which I announced several years ago. I could have brought it out at that time, but it will be more useful to me and to the reader that this did not happen. For when I took over the Description of the Deeply Incised Stones in the Stoss Museum in Florence, I had to become involved again with many investigations that I had previously not carried out with the same attentiveness. This work, which was composed in French, was printed in Florence, but the preface and index were printed in Rome, and without these two parts it is six hundred pages thick. As I reviewed my history again after completion of this work, I found it to be inadequate, partly as regards essentials, and partly with regard to certain pieces of evidence. And considering this I decided to organize the whole text according to a different system. I had more drawings made for the necessary copperplate prints, which are gradually being engraved. And these are the reasons for the delay.\
The present Remarks on the Architecture of the Ancients developed during the investigations I have made over more than five years, while I have been living in Rome and other cities of Italy, into everything concerning the arts. And for this purpose I have had all the aid necessary, especially through the close association with which his Eminence Cardinal Alessandro Albani, the greatest expert on antiquities, has honored me.\
Concerning what I have written here about architecture, a scholar who has studied antiquities attentively and has the requisite knowledge on the subject can speak with just as much depth as an architect, and what Aristotle said of the Spartans is equally true in this context: \'93They did not learn about music, but they know how to judge it correctly.\'94 By this I understand the kind of learning that can be acquired in a guild. The study of antiquities also requires as much knowledge and investigation of architecture as is also required of the other two arts, painting and sculpture. And looking at old buildings awakens a desire to understand them more exactly.\
It is astonishing that many architectural monuments have not aroused the attention of those who should have examined and described them; this is the case with the surviving buildings of the city of Poseidonia or Paestum (now known as Piesto or also Pesto), on the Gulf of Salerno,\
which I have cited on various occasions in my Remarks. Kliiver traveled through the area of Paestum, and the whole of Italy, and he described everything at great length, but he recalls the ruins of this city in just a few words. And there are just as few reports by other writers of the Kingdom of Naples on the relics of this city. A few Englishmen went there for the first time about ten years ago, and since then people have begun to talk about it. About four years ago the Conte Gazola,1 from Parma, commander of the artillery of the King of Sicily, had precise records and drawings made of the buildings at Paestum, and they are now being engraved in copper. A few years ago, the Baron Antonini2 (a man of eighty and brother of the author of the popular Italian and French dictionary printed in Paris in two quarto volumes) brought out a description of Lucania, printed in Naples, and planned to describe the remains of the city of Paestum, which are part of the landscape mentioned. He had been at the place itself more than once, as he told me personally, as he owns some estates not far from there. But his report was so inaccurate that the pages containing it had to be reprinted, and the Marchese Galliani3 in Naples made a draft for the author of what he should say about Paestum. Nevertheless, one big mistake has remained, for it is claimed that the city was built in the round, but the opposite is true: the encircling wall is a complete rectangle. If one compares what is said only in this text about the buildings at Paestum with the report that I shall give the reader, then it will become obvious how inadequate and incomplete the former is.\
The city of Paestum lies about one and a half Italian miles from the seashore. The entire encircling wall, which is in the shape of a square and has four gates, has been preserved, and it is made of exceptionally large stones, which have been cut in a rectangular or long narrow shape and put together without mortar. Their outer sides have been cut into six surfaces like diamonds. Round towers stand on the wall at a specific distance from each other. Inside the walls and in the middle of the former city are two temples and a third public building, which was either a basilica, a palaestra, or a gymnasium. These are without doubt the oldest Greek buildings, and together with the temple at Agrigento in Sicily and the Pantheon in Rome, there is no other work of architecture that has been preserved so completely. For one of the temples has its frontispiece complete, both at the front and at the back, and on the other the greater part of it has survived.\
The two temples are amphiprostyle, which means that they have a free colonnade around them and a free hall at both the back and front.4 The largest temple, which has suffered less, has six columns at the back and front and fourteen at the side, counting the corner columns twice. The smaller temple has six columns at the back and front, like the former one, and thirteen on the side. The cella of this second temple has a special hall only at the front, with the same number of columns, and inside the\
Fig. 9. The temples at Paestnm.\
Photo Olirier-Bonjoch, 2010, Wikimedia Commons.\
cella near the end there is a large, long rectangular raised area, which was probably an altar. The large temple has yet another upper sequence of smaller columns above the lower columns inside the cella, and they have all been preserved. All the columns are Doric and have grooves and are not the width of five diameters, as I have shown in the Remarks. What is more, they do not have bases, and those around the larger temple have two rings around them near the capitals (collarini), such that a part of the grooves stick out to the width of several fingers beyond them to the capitals themselves.\
The cellas are raised up on three steps and much higher than the outer colonnade of the temple, and these steps, like those that go round the temple, are of an unusual height, as I have indicated at greater length in the Remarks. At the top of these steps you can go into the cellas, and the halls of the temples, which are the length of two columns and pilasters, as has been said, and have in each case a breadth of three columns. The halls of in front of the cella of the larger temple have a length of twenty-four and a half palms and a breadth of twenty-four palms. There is something especially worth noticing on the smaller temple: in the hall in front of its cella the third column of its breadth or width, however you describe it, stands at both sides on the third step that leads to the cella. And these two columns have a round band around them at the bottom, and also a base (plinth), which is also round. It follows that even in the most ancient times there were Doric columns with that kind of base; no one knew this before.\
The intercolumniation of the temples is not completely one and a half times the diameter of the columns, as Vitruvius teaches us. For\
the diameter of the columns on the larger temple is seven palms and five eighths, and the intercolumniation is a full eight palms. And there is something special about the intercolumniation of the outer colonnade around the temple: there is a rectangular depression or hollowed out area, which has been carved out to the width of a finger and takes up the whole space between the feet of the columns. The columns inside the cella of this temple are five palms and one third in diameter.\
The length of the larger temple is three hundred and eighty-six palms; the breadth is ninety-six. The breadth of the cella is forty-two palms and a half. The length of the smaller temple is seventy-six palms, and the breadth is fifty-five. The breadth of the cella is twenty-eight palms.\
The third building has nine columns at the front and back and eighteen at the side, when the corner columns are counted twice, and all of these columns have below the capitals a narrow intertwined ornament, which has been created with extreme ingenuity; on some these ornaments are similar to each other, but not on most of them. The length of the building is two hundred and five palms, and the breadth ninety-two. This building had, just like the temples, a closed interior space, which was forty-three palms and a half wide, with three rows of columns on the inside, of which the three columns and the corner pilaster at the entrance to this inner part of the building are still standing. Three columns of the middle interior row are still standing upright. The diameter of the columns is five palms and three quarters, and the intercolumniation is eleven palms and two thirds, which therefore diverges from the rule laid down by Vitruvius. The whole floor of this building has a gentle slope on both sides to allow the rain to run down.\
It should be generally noted that all three buildings have the two lower parts of the entablature on the columns, or of the architrave, but the third upper part of the entablature, that is the cornice, is missing on all three. In the Remarks I have talked about the characteristics of the Doric order that they display. The length and breadth of these buildings are measured from the third and top step that one mounts to reach them, and the palm is the Neapolitan one, which is bigger than the Roman one.\
Apart from the buildings described one should first mention an amphitheater almost in the middle of the square of the city, of which there remain the lower vaults and ten rows of steps or seats above them. According to Antonini\'92s information its length is a hundred and sixty -five palms and its breadth a hundred and twenty. Apart from this there are traces of a theater and outside the walls three grave monuments made of bricks.\
This is the first detailed report of the antiquities of the city of Paestum, as much as can be made clear without copper engravings. I have been assured that at Velia, formerly also called Elea (from which town the Eleatic School also takes its name), which is fifteen Italian miles beyond\
Paestum, there are a considerable number of pieces of old buildings and half-preserved temples to be seen. But no one, as far as I know, has provided any written reports about it.\
In Croton in Greater Greece there are extensive ruins still standing, which are nowadays called the School of Pythagoras. But apart from this very little has been preserved in this area, where once such great and famous cities were, as I know from Lord Brudenell,5 among others, who about three years ago traveled along the whole coast of Calabria as far as Taranto.\
The very first to provide drawings of the monuments of ancient architecture in Sicily a few years ago was Giuseppe Pancrazi in his Commentary on Sicily, and I have improved upon his report on the ruins of the Temple of the Olympian Jupiter at Agrigento (Girgenti) in a special little work based on more accurate discoveries. Apart from the relics in this place, general destruction of all the works of ancient architecture has taken place.\
Most of the temples and buildings in Greece were partly made known and partly more precisely drawn and described by Monsieur le Roy6 in 1759. In the month of May in 1750 two painters from England, James Stuart and Nicholas Revett,7 after having practiced their art for several years in Rome, undertook a journey to Greece. Their friends in England collected together a sufficient contribution to promote this project; this was an advance or prepayment for the description which they would make. Some paid for many copies of this work in advance, and the estimate made was two guineas each. The artists in question spent the first year of their journey in Pula and in Dalmatia, where they made precise drawings of all the relics of antiquity. The following year they went to Greece, and stayed there for almost four years. In the month of December, 1754, they came back to Marseille. Mr. Dawkins8 and Mr. Bouverie,9 who fitted out a ship at their own expense with everything necessary for their valuable journey through the Levant, and whom we have to thank for the description of the buildings at Palmyra, met their two fellow countrymen in Athens and encouraged them in their enterprise. Bouverie, the travelling companion of Mr. Dawkins, died on the Negroponte peninsular of a high fever, but the latter continued his journey with Mr. Wood,10 who published the work on Palmyra. After his return to England Dawkins became a generous promoter of descriptions of the antiquities of Greece, and Mr. Stuart was given every convenience in his house in London to have his drawings made into copper engravings, for which purpose he made use of the services of two skilled artists, Mr. Strange and Mr. Basire.11 Dawkins died a few years ago in the prime of life, and his death is a loss for the arts and sciences. Work on his book about Greece was continued. The plan of it was published, and the copperplates for the first volume were completed two years ago. This work is now eagerly awaited, for it will be\
more extensive and more thorough than the work of Monsieur le Roy, for the former artists spent as many years as the latter did months in Greece.\
What we now lack is a similar work on the buildings of Thebes and other places in Egypt. Norden should have undertaken this, if he had had the time and money. Then he would have left to posterity a useful work, instead of presenting either long familiar or insignificant things.\
I wish the reader to allow me to admit here in a few words the greatest duty and obligation I have in the world. I owe this to the Reverend Father Leo Rauch,12 father confessor to His Royal Majesty in Poland, and one of the most worthy human beings, who is father, friend, and the dearest person in the world to me. He is the reason for the contentment that I enjoy, which I never feel and enjoy without remembering the constant gratitude I owe him. My highest human yearning is directed towards him and all my wishes concern him, and may God fulfill them. Another admission of gratitude, which I intend to make in a more worthy context, I owe to two of my friends, Herr Wille,13 the royal engraver in Paris, and Herr Fiissli,14 painter and town clerk in Zurich. The way in which, without knowing me personally, they both stood by me is a tribute to human nature. But the modesty of their magnanimous souls keeps me from acting against their wish, which was to do good in secret. I humbly commend myself to all lovers of the arts and to my patrons and friends in Germany and in other lands.\
Rome, 1 December 1760.\
On Archaeology\
Open Letter on the Herculanean Excavations (1762)\
Noble Count,1\
As I had the pleasure of accompanying you on your journey from Rome to Naples during the carnival in 1762, I decided to set down something on the unusual things that you saw in the Royal Museum at Portici, to remind you of the most remarkable things, and at the same time to provide instruction to other travelers, who are not able, during a short stay there, to give everything their full attention.\
I have had more opportunity than others, both strangers and local people, to examine these treasures of antiquity, as I stayed for almost two months on my first visit in Portici itself By virtue of a royally sanctioned decree that I should be shown everything that one is allowed to see, and with all possible convenience I made use of this free access to the best of my ability. As a result, I spent whole days in the museum. You know, Noble Count, that during our stay of three weeks in Naples scarcely a day passed when I did not travel to Portici in the early morning. Apart from this my close friendship with Mr. Camillo Paderni, the custodian of this museum, provided me with sufficient opportunity to examine everything as I wanted, and it was like being in my own home there.\
I am sure, Noble Count, that the kind nature with which you were born will enable you to accept this open letter addressed to you with the same pleasure you kindly displayed in the presence of the author. Confident of this, I have gone beyond the usual bounds of an open letter, and also because I flatter myself that the public will be obliged to you when it discovers here unknown and sought-after reports, because you provided the opportunity for it.\
I cannot become involved in a detailed account, but I shall be content with indicating the most remarkable items, and I shall also leave aside what I have included about the paintings and statues there in my History of the Art of Antiquity, which has now gone to press. I shall cite on a few occasions a work by Mr. Giacomo Martorelli, Professor of Greek Language in the seminar of the Cathedral Church in Naples, which has the title Da rejyia theca ealamaria. This man, who has sound learning in the Greek language, was given permission to write about an ancient inkpot made of metal which is to be found in the museum at Portici (but\
which was found, not in the cities that had been discovered, but elsewhere). On the four corners of this piece there are the same number of gods, inlaid in silver, which the author considers to be planets, and as he grasped this public opportunity of revealing everything he knows, the gods opened for him a wide field, in which he could indulge himself in mythology and ancient astronomy. At the same time he pours out whatever can be said about inks, pens, the art of writing, and the works of the ancients. But as he criticizes and attacks Canon Mazzocchi,2 a man more than eighty years old, who is the pride of Italian learning, in a vehement, inappropriate, and often improper way, the publishing of this work was forbidden just as the last sheet was about to be printed, and it was also stipulated that the author should give it to no one outside his own home. I have managed, however, to look through this work, and I shall as the occasion arises add my comments and corrections. The work consists of 734 pages, and the Preliminary Report, addenda, and three extensive indexes amount to 88 pages, in large quarto.\
I shall give a provisional account first of the places buried by Vesuvius, second, of the burying process itself, third, of the discoveries made there and the methods used, and in the last part I shall provide my own observations on the discoveries.\
First, the situation of the places buried by Vesuvius, Herculaneum, Pompeii, and Stabia must be indicated, especially in so far as errors made by writers should be noted and corrections made. Whoever wishes to acquire more knowledge on the matter can find it in the well-known works.\
Strabo3 says that Herculaneum lay on a tongue of land that stretched out into the sea and was exposed to the wind from Africa (the Scirocco). Thus I understand the word aKpa, which can just as little be understood to mean promontory as when it is applied to the three corners of the island of Sicily. Both ancient and modern writers have failed to understand this word in its correct sense, because of their ignorance of the situation of the places. Cluverius,4 among others, has demonstrated this misunderstanding among ancient poets who talked of the three corners of Sicily and described them as promontories. The shore at Reggio in Calabria is as flat as in Sicily opposite, where Pelorus was situated, and the mountains first start to rise several miles away from the shore. The word aKpa is therefore what we now call a cape (capo). Thus where formerly Antium stood is now called Capo d\'92Anzo, which is not a promontory but is and was a flat shore. However, the Circeian Promontory between the place mentioned and Terracina, which is a high rock, is not called Capo but Monte Circello.\
It is the doubt expressed by the Neapolitan scholar mentioned concerning Strabo that causes me to make this remark and give this explanation. This scholar, who takes the word aKpav in its usual meaning\
of promontory, wants to show that Strabo\'92s text is mistaken, because Herculaneum could not have been lying on a promontory, and he takes the liberty of putting paKpav. And so he translates Opoupav paKpav sxov as oppidum in ipsa littoris longitudine situm, and takes the word paKpav to be absolute and substantive, contrary to all uses of it, and without supporting this liberty with any source. Indeed, he cuts the matter short and says that this way of speaking is familiar to beginners in the language. I am somewhat more than a beginner in it, and cannot recall any such use of the word paKpav.\
The shore on which ancient Herculaneum was built stretched out as a tongue of land into the sea. That means it was a cape (capo). This is Strabo\'92s opinion, and he does not intend to refer to a promontory. This can be seen just by looking at it, for Portici and Resina, which were built on top of the buried city of Herculaneum, lie at almost the same level as the sea, which has a flat and sandy shore. Consequently, it is even less likely that ancient Herculaneum was at a raised level, especially when one considers how deep this city is below the earth. Its theater is more than a hundred palms deep, and it is reached by the same number of steps, which were carved out by the workers for the sake of convenience. The pavement or beautiful floor with which the second room of the Herculanean museum is adorned was found at 102 Neapolitan palms beneath the earth, and it was laid in an open loggia on a kind of bastion, which was, on the other hand, raised 25 palms above the seashore.\
From this it follows that the sea must have risen very much higher, which at first glance might seem to be a strange thing to say, but which is confirmed both here and also in Holland by the palpable evidence of one\'92s own eyes. For in Holland the sea is obviously higher than the land, which is proved by the necessity of having dams. But the sea could not have been so high at an earlier time, because this province could not have been built on at the time when no boundaries had been erected by human hand. The objection that could be made by someone, that perhaps ancient Herculaneum had sunk down in an earthquake, appears to be contradicted by the regular position of the buildings. And at the time when the disaster struck this city there was no report of such an earthquake so powerful that it could swallow up a whole city. And if this could be assumed, it must have happened before the eruption of the mountain, and the ashes from this could not have covered anything, for an earthquake always occurs before an eruption and never follows it.\
There is clear evidence of the sea rising high and falling again on the columns in the forum of the Temple of Aesculapius, or, as others claim, of Bacchus, in Pozzuolo. This building lies on a considerable rise, about fifty paces or so distant from the sea, but it must formerly have been completely flooded with water, for not only the columns lying down but also the ones still standing have been bored through or have holes made in\
them by a long narrow sea creature with a shell. It is especially surprising to see this on columns of the hardest Egyptian granite, which has been perforated like a sieve. The shells are still stuck into many of the holes. The creature is called dactylus, which comes from 5&KTiAog, the finger, because it has the shape, thickness, and length of one. It is to be supposed that these columns must have been eaten away by water for a considerable time before these could attack the stone, to provide the creatures with a way of getting into them. This creature places itself, while it is still young and without a shell, into an opening in the stone, and there covers itself with a shell and twists itself around with it ceaselessly, with the help of the water, which makes the tunnels slippery. It grows and increases in size and continues to bore. And finally, when it has reached its full size, it finds that the exit is too small for it and its shell and it has to stay in its dwelling. It is possible to put one of one\'92s five fingers into the holes of various sizes; they are more smoothly bored out than could be done by steel or some other metal. Furthermore, in the square paved with marble in front of the temple there is still here and there a lot of piled-up sand that was dragged in by the sea. Nowadays and for as long as one can recall, this place is, as I have said, far away from the sea and raised above it. Consequently, the sea must have fallen back again. How this unmistakable process happened and was possible I leave to others to examine; I limit myself to reporting it and the evidence of my own eyes.\
In Strabo\'92s report of Herculaneum it could appear, from the word Opoupiov, which would now be called a fort, or in Italian a burgo or castel, that this place was very small, which seems to contradict the lucky discovery that shows the opposite to be true. But the same word is used by Diodorus5 of Catana, which was a well-known large city. Certain proof of the size and dense population of Herculaneum is provided by the nine hundred drinking and eating places there, or what we would call inns. A lease announcement for these has been preserved in an inscription that will be included in the fourth part of this open letter. Now this place, which is called Herculaneum by most ancient writers, is called Herculis porticum by Petronius,6 and that is where the present name of Portici comes from.\
No one had been able to guess the real place where ancient Herculaneum had stood and was to be found before its actual discovery. The Neapolitan scholar Camillo Pellegrino,7 who was very experienced in the history and the geographical description of this region, places it where Torro del Greco is now, and thus two miles further away, on the road to Salerno and Pompeii. He cites a vague report of inscriptions relating to this city, that are said to have been found there, and concludes only from hearsay that its location is certain and agreed on.\
The name of the city of Resina also deserves some comment. This place is connected to Portici, and the royal castle separates the two, so\
that the lane in the direction of Naples is known as Portici, while what lies on the other side is included in Resina. Some are of the opinion that the name Resina derives from the Villa Retina, about which the younger Pliny talks in the letter in which he describes the eruption of Vesuvius and reports his relation\'92s death. But most people place this villa below the Misenum promontory, because the letter mentions that the Roman fleet, which used to lie in the harbor near Misenum, was lying at anchor by the Villa Retina when the eruption occurred. But I cannot imagine any villa that could be lying below a promontory. The villa mentioned lay below Vesuvius, as Pliny states in no uncertain terms. And at Misenum, which is about twelve Italian miles away from Vesuvius, the danger to the ships and the anxiety could not have been as great as it was described, because it has not been reported that Naples, Puteoli, Cuma, and Baja, places lying between Herculaneum and Misenum, suffered from this sad fate.\
Signor Martorelli, who studies the same point in his Royal Inkwell (p.568), is not satisfied with the derivation of the name Resina from retina, and attempts unnecessarily to improve on this. He believes that one could and should read it as Paetina, that is to say the Villa Paetina, which he locates in this place not far from Herculaneum. Papirius Paetus, a friend of Cicero, had a villa in this area. This is certain from several letters of the latter. This Paetus lost his estates because he belonged to Pompey\'92s party, and in this loss was also included the villa, so that according to the opinion of the scholar mentioned, this villa, which Caesar moved into, became, under his successors, as we call them, imperial property, where later and also at the time we are considering several ships of the Misenum fleet used to lie. This supposition is not too far from the truth, but it is not necessary.\
Pompeii lies on the road to Salerno, and the place where this city stood formerly is about twelve miles from Naples and seven from Portici. The route to it goes via Torre dell\'92Annuntiata. So Herr Reimarus8 is mistaken in his comments on Cassius Dio9 concerning the location of Pompeii, which he sites between Portici and Torre del Greco, which are only two Italian miles from each other. And he is wrong again when he states in the same place that this city used to lie where Castelamare and Stabia now lie. In this he is presumably following what others have said. One can learn more from a good map. The derivation of the name Pompeii, which Martorelli forces the Hebrew language to yield up as though it were natural, is ridiculous: it is said to be named after \'93pum piyha,\'94 os favillae, and Herculaneum after \'93harah kaliya,\'94 praegnans igne. The name of Stabia is said to be derived from \'93shatap,\'94 inundare, and Vesuvius from \'93bo shabiyb,\'94 ubi ignis, as Etna means an oven in Hebrew, and this word (\'93aatona\'94) occurs often in Daniel.10 Many scholars try to find something new to say, with the disadvantage that one doubts their\
common sense.\
This city was the common harbor for Nola, Noceria, and Acerra, as Strabo reports, and goods were brought there from the sea on the river Sarno. So one cannot prove from this, as Pellegrini is at pains to do, that Pompeii had been situated by the sea and at the mouth of the river itself He wishes to attribute the fact that its traces now lie inland to Vesuvius.\
Evidence could be given of the size of the city, and of the present underground discoveries, by the Capitolium there, which Justus Rick11 forgot to mention among the cities outside Rome that had such buildings, and by the large remnants of the amphitheater. This great oval construction lies on a hill, and its inner and outer circumference, that is to say the circumference of the platea, is three thousand Neapolitan palms. It had twenty-four rows of seats, and it has been estimated that it could hold about thirty thousand people. So it was larger than the one in Herculaneum, as I shall demonstrate. You can tell this also from looking at it. This city was, as Seneca reports, almost completely razed by an earthquake under Nero. Thus someone expressed the opinion that what the historian Dio reports both about this and the Herculanean theater involves confusion concerning the time. Dio, who speaks of the first great well-known eruption of Vesuvius under Titus, reports (as the sense of his words are generally understood), that the huge amount of ashes that the mountain spewed out covered and buried the cities of both Herculaneum and Pompeii at the very time when people were gathered in the theater in the latter place. Pellegrini, who assumes that in that latter place mentioned this disaster also struck the amphitheater, cannot make sense of it. He does not believe that a destroyed city could have rebuilt such a large theater in such a short time from Nero to Titus, which, according to him, Tillemont claims, according to reliable reports. Martorelli, without citing the former or touching upon the doubts he had, seems to be of the same opinion. At least I deduce this from the correction that he wishes to make to Dio\'92s report. He asserts that in the passage below xauirig should replace auirjg, in which case the former word would refer to the first one, that is the Herculanean theater. Pellegrini\'92s opinion is not improbable, and it is possible that Dio, writing in the time of Commodius, and therefore remote from the time of the event he is relating, had made a mistake. And if this could be demonstrated, then Martorelli\'92s correction would be right according to the rules of the language. But a single doubt that I would raise against this makes it very unlikely that the theater in Herculaneum was covered over when it was full of people, that is to say, when it had an audience. How is it credible, I say, if this is what happened, that not a single dead body was found? Would they not have been preserved here as they were in Stabia, where they were found? But in the Herculanean theater not even a single bone from a skeleton has been found.\
Stabia, earlier called Stabiae in the plural, lay somewhat further away from Vesuvius than Pompeii, but not where Castelamare now lies, as Cluverius asserts, for Stabaie could not have been thirty stadia away from\
the sea, as Galenus claims, because it lay close to the sea. Stabia lay where Gragnano now lies, which corresponds to the stadia of Galenus. This city had already been destroyed by Sulla in the war with the Marsi, and in Pliny\'92s time there was nothing but summer houses there.\
Further away and towards Sorrento near Prayano underground rooms were uncovered five years ago. But work on them was not continued, so as not to have to take on more workers, and after the entrance was walled up again, the excavation was postponed until another time.\
Concerning the second point, that is, the burial of the places mentioned, I am not disposed to tell the history of them from the reports of the ancient writers, but I will attempt to provide a conception of them from my own comments.\
The first thing that happened to the city of Herculaneum was not the lava or the fiery river of molten rocks flowing over it; first fiery ash from the mountain covered it, and there were massive downpours of rain, which took what had fallen on the mountain down with it into the city, in addition to the ash with which the city had immediately been covered. The ash was so red-hot that it also burned the beams of the houses, which can be found turned into charcoal, and corn and fruit was turned completely black. The downpours of water could not have been so heavy at Pompeii and Stabia, for in both places everything seems to be filled with light ash, and this light material is called papamonte. And the lava could not have reached that far. That is why things that were covered up have been preserved better in the two latter places than they were in Herculaneum. After Herculaneum was covered with ash and inundated by the water, the fiery rivers burst forth and flowed gradually all over the city at a heavy slow pace, and with these rocks the city became covered with a kind of crust. In the same way the ash was accompanied by a cloudburst in the terrible eruption of the year 1631, after the mountain had remained peaceful for about hundred years.\
It can be concluded from the few dead bodies that have been found that the inhabitants managed to escape with their lives, for no traces of them have been found either under Portici, under Resina, or in Pompeii. It was only in Gragnano or Stabia that three women\'92s bodies were found, one of whom seemed to have been the maid of the other two, and had carried a wooden casket. This was lying next to her and had crumbled into ashes. The other two had gold bracelets and ear pendants, and these items are displayed in the museum. In the same place some tools of little value and only a few golden coins and carved stones have been discovered, for anything of any special value was grabbed before fleeing, and the rooms of most of the houses have been found completely emptied. In one room an iron box was found on the floor, thrown down randomly as though it had been lost. The workers were full of joy when they caught sight of it, hoping to find some special items in it, as in that case they would be\
given a reward. Their hopes were dashed, however, as the box had been emptied. In Pompeii indications that the inhabitants took flight hurriedly have been found in the many heavy implements that have been dug up far from the houses and were presumably thrown away as they fled.\
This excavation has provided clear proof of much older eruptions of Vesuvius, and the ancients, who could only make vague conjectures about them from the slag on the mountain, could have become convinced of it from tangible evidence. From the soil, which had the color of ashes, and from caves full of stones, the color of which suggested that they had been burned, Strabo concludes that there had been a conflagration on this mountain. Diodorus does not dare to say anything more than that there were traces of ancient conflagrations on this mountain. However Pliny, who lost his life during its eruption, does not mention a word about it in two places in which he makes a report about Vesuvius, so it seems that he was also unaware of the nature of this mountain. Clear signs of what I am talking about are in the first place the burned earth mixed with slag, on which the whole city of Pompeii is built: this earth is called terra di fiioco. This would have provided reason for further investigations when the foundations were dug for every building that was erected there a long time ago. What is more, the lanes around Herculaneum and also those in Pompeii are paved with large lava stones, which are distinguishable from other pebbles or hard stones by their special blend and by small white patches in the basic grayish-black color, and this kind of stone could not have been unfamiliar to the ancients. One single stone, which is in the museum in Portici and is two palms and three inches wide in Roman measurement, has been taken up from the pavement in Herculaneum. This lava pavement in the buried cities could have been cited very usefully by Father della Torre12 in his description of Vesuvius, and he could have learned from the only paving stone that has been raised that today\'92s lava is no harder than ancient lava, as he asserts, giving good reasons but contrary to experience. Another sign of more ancient eruptions before the time of Titus is the pieces of slag that can be found in the walls of the buildings in Pompeii.\
After a report on the places that were buried and the burying process itself, the third report is about their excavation, an older one in the case of Herculaneum, and subsequently the excavation of all these places that has taken place in our own time.\
Obvious traces of an older excavation, or rather search, of the buried city of Herculaneum have been found under the earth during subsequent digging, and these are indicated in the map of these subterranean cities drawn up by royal command, which I have been lucky to see. It consists of underground passages that have been laboriously hewn out, the purpose of which is perfectly clear, although nobody suspected it previously: this means that one cannot hope to find everything that\
was buried by the mountain. An inscription seems to refer to this subsequent digging that happened long ago, and although it has already appeared in print, it can justifiably be included here, because of the light it can throw on the situation:\
SIGNA TRANSLATA EX ABDITIS LOCIS AD CELEBRITATEM THERMARVM SEVERIANARVM \'95\
AVDENTIVS SAEMILANVS V \'95 C \'95 CON CAMP \'95 CONSTITVIT \'95 DEDICARIQVE PRECEPIT \'95 [sic\\ CVRANTE T \'95 ANNONIO \'95 CHRYSTANTIO VP*13\
Fabretti,14 who published it from a manuscript, explains in his notes on it that he does not understand what the beginning means. Mazocchi also does not want to get involved in discussion of the beginning, and he understands by it the baths in Rome, which were built by Septimius Severus and completed by Antonius Caracalla,15 his son and successor, and which in ancient times were called Antoniana, as they are now, and are generally known as the Baths of Caracalla. It was known exactly where this inscription was written down, and it was found by Martorelli at a stonemason\'92s in Naples, when the latter had already applied his saw to cut up the marble. Consequently it must tell us about things that happened in Naples or in the surrounding region. So this scholar is of the opinion that SIGNA TRANSLATA EX ABDITUS LOCIS must refer to statues that had been excavated from the buried cities and primarily from Herculaneum. By Severian Baths he understands not the baths of Septimius Severus but those of the Emperor Alexander Severus, and nevertheless he cites Spartianus, who mentions the former and not the latter; nor could he, because his history does not go so far. He should have referred to Lampridius,16 who mentions the Alexandrian Baths in Rome. In addition Martorelli says that we know the period of Audentius Saemilanus, Viri Consularis, who lived at the time of Severus (but he does not mention which Severus). And where he knows this from he did not care to tell us. The statues were removed from here to the baths in Rome and set up by the architect Chrysanthus. Thus the inscription and the ancient subterranean passages that were excavated explain each other. Soon afterward the recollection of these buried treasures was extinguished from human memory by the destructiveness of the Barbarians and from ignorance.\
Modern excavation came about on the occasion of digging a well, which Prince Elboeuf had done for him not far from his house. This house had been erected near the sea by the gentleman mentioned, as his residence in this place, behind the monastery of the strict Franciscan order of S. Pietro of Alcantara on the edge and the rocks of the lava itself. And after his death it was passed on to the House of Falletti in Naples, from\
which it was purchased by the present King of Spain, with the intention of amusing himself with fishing there and especially with the art of angling for fish. The well in question was dug in the garden of the Barefoot Augustinians and the lava was broken through for it. Work was continued until they were able to reach firm soil, which consists of ashes from Vesuvius, and here they found three clothed female statues, to which the Austrian viceroy rightfully laid claim. He had them taken to Rome, where they were put together again, and he gave them to Prince Eugen, who set them up in his garden in Vienna. After his death his heiress sold these three statues to His Majesty the King of Poland for six thousand thalers or guilders (I do not know exactly which), and seven years ago, before my departure for Italy, they stood in a pavilion of the large Royal Gardens near Dresden, among the statues and busts of the Chigi Palace, which the blessed late King of Poland bought for sixty thousand scudi, which he added to another collection of ancient works that Cardinal Alexander Albani let him have for ten thousand scudi.\
After this excavation Prince Elboeuf was forbidden to continue with any subsequent digging, and from that time on no more was thought about it for more than thirty years, until the present King of Spain gained possession of this conquered realm by peaceful means, and chose Portici as his spring residence. The well that had been dug in former times was still there, and at the king\'92s orders it was dug down much further, until traces of buildings were found, which were part of the theater, and this was the first thing to be excavated. And the well can still be seen, as far as it was broken through the lava, and is to be found in the middle of the theater, onto which light shines through this opening. The inscriptions with the name of the city of Herculaneum that were found identified the place where they were digging, and this encouraged them to continue the work under the earth.\
The task of supervising this subterranean work was given to a Spanish land surveyor or military engineer, Roque Joachin de Alcubierre,17 who had followed the king there from his country. He is now a colonel and head of the Corps of Neapolitan Engineers. This man, who had as little experience of contact with antiquities as the moon has of crabs, as the Italian saying has it, was guilty of causing much damage and the loss of many beautiful things through his inexperience. One example can serve for all the others. When a large public inscription, consisting of metal letters about two palms long was discovered (I do not know whether it was on the theater or on another building), it was torn down from the wall without drawing a copy of the inscription, and thrown all mixed up into a basket. It was shown to His Majesty in this confused state. The first thought that must occur to everybody was the question, what these letters meant, and no one could say. For many years they stood in the museum hung up haphazardly, and everyone could have the pleasure of\
making up whatever words he liked from them. Finally however they were thoroughly studied until they could be turned into some words. Among others were IMP.AUG. How the same procedure was followed with the metal quadriga I will mention below in the fourth section.\
As this Don Roque was promoted after some time, a military engineer from Switzerland, Carl Weber,18 who is now a major, was appointed assistant supervisor with the responsibility for exploring the underground locations and caverns, and one has this sensible man to thank for all the good arrangements made subsequently. The first thing he did was make a proper ground plan of the subterranean passages and the excavated buildings, using all kinds of measurements. This ground plan he made clearer through other drawings, showing the elevation of the whole excavation, which one must imagine as having all the soil over it removed, in order to look into the innermost part of the buildings, which with their rooms and gardens, as well as the actual places where everything was found, are revealed to our view from above. But these elevations are not shown to anyone.\
After being successful with the Herculanean excavations, attempts were made to find the locations of other places, and the real location of ancient Stabia was found. And in Pompeii the huge remains of the amphitheater, which had always been visible above the earth on a hill, were revealed. In both places it was possible to do further excavations at less expense than in Herculaneum, because they did not have to get through the lava there. There is nowhere you can proceed with greater confidence than in Pompeii, because one knows for certain that with every step one is moving in a large city, and the main street has been found, which goes in a dead straight line. With all this certainty of finding treasures that were unknown to older generations, the work still proceeds at a sleepy pace, and there are no more than fifty workers altogether, including the slaves from Algiers and Tunis, in all the subterranean locations. On my last journey I found only eight men working at the excavation of a large city like Pompeii. The way one proceeds in conducting further excavations is such that not even an area the width of a hand can be ignored. The main passage is followed in a straight line, and from here one goes along both sides, and when a square space of six palms has been excavated and examined on all sides, then another space of the same size is excavated opposite it, and the soil from this is put into the space opposite, partly to save on expenses, and partly to support the pile of soil by adding more to it. And so one proceeds, alternating from one side to the other.\
I know that people from abroad as well as travelers who see all this or could see it, as it were, in passing do not want anything to be filled up with soil again but to see, as in the ground plans mentioned, the whole underground city of Herculaneum lying uncovered before them. They rebuke the court and those who have been appointed to supervise this\
work for their bad taste. But this is a judgment based on first impressions without a thorough examination of the location and other circumstances. I agree with them as far as the theater is concerned, where this would have been possible and excavation would have been worth the expense, and it was wrong to be satisfied with excavating the seats, which could be imagined from so many ancient theaters, while leaving covered and buried the skene itself, the most important part, which we have no visual conception of. Meanwhile, work has started to satisfy this desire, and the steps that lead from the arena or the platea to the skene have been excavated. So in time it could become possible to see the whole of the Herculanean theater, at least below ground.\
Concerning the uncovering of the whole city, however, I would ask those who wish this to consider the fact that, as the houses have been crushed by the huge weight of the lava, there would be nothing to see but the four walls. Furthermore, as those walls that were painted were removed, so as not to expose what has been painted to the air and the weather, the best houses could only be seen in a torn-down condition, and only the walls of the worst houses would be left standing. Consequently it is easy to understand what an enormous expense it would be to blast away all the lava and to dig out all the earth, which would be partly turned to stone and partly otherwise. And what would be the use of it? Just to see some destroyed old walls. And finally, to satisfy the desire of some inappropriately inquisitive persons, one would have to destroy a whole well-constructed and heavily populated city to bring to light a destroyed city and a heap of stones. However, the entire excavation of the theater would cost nothing, except what it would cost to excavate the garden of the Barefoot Augustinians, below which it is situated.\
Those who want to see the completely excavated four walls of formerly buried houses can go to Pompeii. But people do not want to take so much trouble: it is best left to Englishmen. In that place it is possible to proceed in that way, for the whole city is covered with not very fertile soil, and as for a long time the most delicious wine was grown in this place, the vineyards planted there do not now yield very much, and it would cause no great harm to lay them waste. Here, as in other places in the same area, one also senses a harmful vapor, called mofeta, that causes everything to dry up, as I found to be the case among a large number of elm trees, which I had seen fresh and green five years before. This vapor is generally the harbinger of an imminent eruption of the mountain and is evident first in cellars. Before the last eruption some people fell down dead on the spot as they went into the cellars of their houses.\
It can be seen from this report about the arrangements for excavating these places that due to such a sleepy attitude there will be much left for our descendants into the fourth generation to dig up and discover. At even less expense it would probably be possible to find just as large\
treasures if excavations were conducted in Pozzuolo, Baiae, Cuma, and Misenum, for here were the magnificent villas of great Romans. But the court is content with the present excavations, and no one is allowed to dig their own pit. There are even buildings in these places that are still unknown, as in the case of an English ship\'92s captain, who, while lying at anchor in this area, discovered a magnificent large hall beneath the earth, which one can only manage to get into by water. In it the most beautiful work in gypsum has been preserved. This discovery occurred two years ago, and I myself did not receive news of it, through Mr. Adam19 from Edinburgh in Scotland, nor did I see the drawings of it, until my return from Naples. This enthusiast for the arts, especially for architecture, is about to set out on a journey to Greece and Asia Minor.\
After the third part, on the manner in which the excavation was conducted, it remains to give a report in the fourth part primarily on the excavations themselves, and here I will repeat the statement I made at the beginning of this open letter, that I would not touch upon everything, nor would I repeat what I have explained elsewhere. It is appropriate for me to start with the excavated subterranean areas themselves and the buildings that we call immovable excavations, for which comments should be provided on the type of construction, the buildings, and the houses, and indeed in relation to each of the buried places individually, as far as it has been possible for me to gather information about them from the reports, which have been kept secret. Secondly, however, and primarily, a report will be given on the discoveries displayed in the museum, partly on paintings, statues, busts, and small figures, to which I will attach some inscriptions, and partly on utensils; and finally I will deal in detail with the excavated writings. The reader should note here the nature of the Neapolitan palm, in which most measurements are provided: it is equal to fourteen Roman inches and is thus two inches longer than the Roman palm.\
For its period and size the first and most distinguished of the immovable excavations is the theater of the city of Herculaneum. It has eighteen rows of seats, each of them four Roman palms deep and one palm high, which have been carved out of a kind of tuff, and not from hard rocks as Martorelli reports. Above these seats there rose a porticus, and below this were three more rows of seats. For convenience there are between the lower seats seven special stairways called vomitoria. The diameter of the lower seating area is sixty-two palms, and it has been worked out that, calculating one and a half palms per person, three thousand five hundred people could sit in this theater, apart from those who had seats in the arena or the platea. This inner area was paved with heavy slabs of giallo antico, as can be seen from a few traces, which have been left as reminders. The vaulted passageways under the seats were lined with white marble, as the traces show, and the cornice that goes around it is also made of marble.\
On top of the theater there stood a quadriga, that is to say a chariot harnessed to four horses, together with a life-size human figure on it, the whole thing made of gilded metal, and the base of white marble on which this work stood can still be seen. Some assert that it was three bigae, that is, three chariots, with two horses each. And this uncertainty is evidence of the stupidity of those who had a hand in this excavation. These works were, as one can easily imagine, knocked over, crushed, and broken into pieces by the lava, but not a piece of it was missing when it was excavated. But how did they proceed with this valuable debris? All the pieces were collected together, loaded onto a cart, taken off to Naples, and unloaded in the castle yard, where they dumped them on top of each other in a corner. And this metal lay there, like old pieces of iron, for a long time, and after someone had removed one bit here and one bit there, it was finally decided to pay a worthy tribute to these relics. And what did this consist of? A large part of them were melted down and made into two big busts of the king and queen, molded in a grand style. How these works must have turned out I can well imagine, despite the fact that I have never seen them, for they disappeared from sight and were cast aside when people began to be aware of this ignorant, irresponsible procedure. The remaining pieces of the chariot, the horses, and the figure were on the other hand finally taken to Portici and completely hidden from the eyes of the world in the vaults below the royal castle. Some considerable time after this the person in charge of the museum made the suggestion of putting together all the pieces of the horses to make at least one, and this was allowed. And the metal workers who had been ordered from Rome to do work on other excavations were set to carry out this task. Not all the individual pieces that made up a whole horse could be found, and some new casts had to be made, and in this way they finally put together a horse, and it was a fine horse, which has been put up in the inner courtyard of the museum. On the marble stand there is the following inscription in letters of gilded metal, made by the famous Mazocchi:\
EX \'95 Q\\AD RIGA \'95 AENEA \'95\
SPLENDIDISSIMA CVM \'95 SVIS \'95 IVGALIBVS \'95\
COMMINVTA \'95 AC \'95 DISSIPATA SVPERSTES \'95 ECCE \'95 EGO \'95 VNVS \'95\
RESTO \'95\
NONNISI \'95 REGIA \'95 CVRA REPOSITIS \'95 APTE \'95 SEXCENTIS IN \'95 QVAE \'95 VESWIVS \'95 ME \'95\
ABSYRTI \'95 INSTAR \'95\
DISCERPSERAT \'95\
MEMBRIS *20\
In this inscription some criticism could be made of the word SEXCENTIS, which is the number commonly used to denote an indefinite large number, but which is too large here, for a hundred pieces could not be made out of it. Also the metaphor INSTAR ABSYRTI can be considered very superfluous here and alien to the style of inscriptions. Also the separation between the words sexcentis and membris is too great and too poetic.\
This horse, whether it was put together well or badly, seemed to be made from one piece, until gradually the joints, which had been badly fixed together and filled in, opened up with the heat, for it is difficult to join a new cast to a break in an old piece of metal. And when, in March 1759, in my presence, heavy rain fell, water ran into the joints and the horse caught dropsy. The most careful efforts were made to cover up this disgraceful aspect of the completion. The museum courtyard was kept closed for about three days, until the water could be drained out of the stomach. The horse has remained in this worrying condition up till now without anything being done about it, which would be difficult. And this is the story of the quadriga of gilded metal on top of the Herculaneum theater.\
Not far from the theater was a round temple, which is believed to be of Hercules, from the interior walls of which the largest of the paintings that are in the first volume, were taken. One of these is of Theseus, whose hand the Athenian boys and girls are kissing, when he came back from Crete after having slain the minotaur. And on this, the largest work, one can see the roundness of the walls. The others are the Birth of Telephus, Chiron and Achilles, and Pan and Olympus.\
These buildings stood in the public square of the city, where the marble horseback statues of the older and younger Nonius Balbus were found, which were the first ones to be completed, because they were the best preserved, and they were put in the portal of the royal casde under glass casing. One statue stands facing the other. The space where they stand has not been built up however. The copper engraving of one of them, which was drawn from memory, can be found engraved in Gori\'92s Symbolis litteraris^ and gives a good impression of them.\
Near this public square there lay a villa or country house, together with a garden belonging to it that stretched as far as the sea. And it was in this house that the ancient writings that are discussed in the last section of this work, and the busts of marble in the antechambers of the deceased queen, together with some beautiful statues of women in metal, were found. It must be generally noted that this building as well as other villas in this and other neighboring places, together with other houses, were only of one story. This villa included a large pond, which was 252 Neapolitan palms long and 27 wide, and both ends of it were made into a semicircle:	Round	about were what we call garden pieces, and\
this whole square was set with columns made with bricks and covered with gypsum, with 22 on one of the longest sides and 10 on the shorter sides. From the top of these columns beams went into the walls that had been built around the garden, and this created an arbor around the pond. Below this were compartments for washing or bathing, with alternate semicircular or square shapes. Between the columns stood the busts mentioned, alternating with the figures of women in metal. Around the outside of the garden wall a small water channel had been laid. A long path led out of the garden to a round open loggia, or summer seat, by the sea, which was at a height of 25 Neapolitan palms above the shore. From the long path you could go up four steps to the round space, where there was the beautiful pavement mentioned above or stone floor made of marmo africano and giallo antico. It consists of twenty-two circles, which become narrower toward the center, of alternating stones with cuneiform carvings, and in the middle of it is a large rose, and this serves as the floor of the second room of the Herculanean Museum. It is twenty-four Roman palms in diameter. Around this floor there was a border of white marble one and a half Neapolitan palms wide, which lay almost half a palm higher. This work was, as has been mentioned above, 102 Neapolitan palms below the earth and covered with lava from Vesuvius. As far as I could discover, there was also, apart from the library, a small completely dark room in this villa, about five palms long in all directions, and twelve palms high, which was painted with snakes, from which one could conclude that it served the Eleusinian secret cult, which is made probable by a beautiful metal tripod that was found there. Not many other large Herculanean buildings have been excavated yet.\
Among the immovable excavations of the city of Pompeii I want to restrict myself to a small rectangular temple or chapel, which was dug up in the year 1761. It belonged to a large house or villa, and the tym-panon, which was painted with all kinds of foliage, rested on four columns made of bricks and covered with gypsum. These were about one and a half palms in diameter and seven palms and seven inches high, with carved incisions to indicate the grooves on them. One of these columns stands in the courtyard of the Herculaneum Museum. The temple was raised up two steps and in the central intercolumniation, which was much wider than the others, there were three more steps on the inside, with their lines curved inwards, up to the floor of the temple, which thus stood that much higher than the columns. These steps were covered with slabs of bad marmo cipollino. Inside this small temple there stood a Diana in the archaic style on a base that was also overlaid with marble. In front of the temple, on the side toward the right-hand corner, there stood a round altar; on the other side was a well. But close to the temple was a water tank, and there were four fountains or openings coming out of the tank at the corners, which had been turned inward to enable the water to be\
drawn out of it more conveniently. The only building of two stories in all of the excavations was found here, and it can be seen perfectly uncovered. When I was there in February of this year, 1762, with the official in charge of the museum, the workers were busy clearing out a painted room and bringing to light a kind of drinks table, which was overlaid with marble, and in the same place they found a sundial.\
In Gragnano, or ancient Stabia, a villa or country house was found that was similar to the Herculanean one in most respects. In the middle of the garden there was a pond with four equal sections, over which the same number of bridges went from one arch. Around the empty space there were ten garden ornaments on one side, and on the other side ten rooms for washing or bathing, which as in Herculaneum were alternately semicircular and square. These rooms, like those in the other place, were covered by an arbor, which was made in the same way as the other one and rested on similar columns in front. Around the whole garden a water channel had been laid on the inside and the outside of the wall, presumably to catch rainwater, for no trace of any water pipes were found here, and in this area they must have lived mainly from water that fell from the sky, for in the atrium of this villa there was a large water tank. The marvelous water container for the Roman fleet near Misenum, called the piscina mirabilis, was filled with rainwater in the same way, and it was the soldiers of the fleet who filled it up, as can be deduced still from some pipes above it, where the water was presumably poured in. This underground container stands on five long arches, each one thirteen Roman palms wide, and the pillars stand the same distance from each other.\
The excavated objects and rarities kept in the museum can be divided into two classes: the first of them contains artistic objects and implements, and the second one contains the writings. Of the first kind the paintings, of which there are now more than a thousand works, both large and small, should be mentioned first. They are all mounted on wood with glass put on the front of them, and some of the largest ones, such as the Theseus, the Telephus, and the Chiron, and so on, have glass doors so that they can be studied more closely. Most of them are painted on a dry ground, or a tempera, as is also indicated in the description of these paintings, and a few of them are on wet grounds, or a fresco. As people were at first of the opinion that all the wall paintings had been put onto wet grounds and that there was no doubt about it, the method of painting in these works was not examined. At the same time someone came up with a varnish that would preserve these paintings, and all those that were excavated were covered with this. Consequently it is no longer possible to examine the method of painting in them. The most beautiful works are the figures of woman dancers and centaurs, about one span in length, on a black ground, which show evidence of a great master, for they were as quickly executed as a thought. After these come two works that belong\
together, of slightly larger figures. On one of them a young satyr is trying to kiss a girl, and on the other an old satyr is in love with a hermaphrodite. Nothing can be conceived in a more sensual way and nothing painted more beautifully. In addition, some fruit and flower pieces done in this kind of painting cannot be surpassed.\
From this we can deduce the following: if there were such exceptional works on the walls of houses in a place like Herculaneum, then how perfect must the works of the great and famous Greek painters have been in their best period? We can come closer to a sense of the rightness of this judgment through visual proof in four paintings that, although found in Stabia, were not painted there. They were found laid together in pairs with the reverse sides of the wall one on top of the other and leaning against the wall on the floor of the room in the villa mentioned, and must therefore have been sawn out somewhere else and removed from there, perhaps in Greece. They were then brought here to be set into the wall of the room, when the eruption broke out and prevented it. This is an excavation that was carried out at the end of last year, 1761. The figures are about one and a half spans in size and were executed with the greatest skill, much more so than any of the previously excavated works. And all four of them have their frames, which have been decorated with various colors. It is a pity that two of them are broken and thus damaged in the process. I have described them at length in my History of the Art of Antiquity.\
Here it should be remembered that all those wall paintings that have left Italy and crossed the Alps, whether they have gone to England, France, or Germany, must be regarded as forgeries. The Comte de Caylus22 had one of these engraved, considering it to be an ancient painting, and included it in his collection of antiquities, because it had been sold to him as a work from Herculaneum. And the Margrave of Bayreuth23 was talked into accepting several of these paintings during his presence in Rome, and I have heard that such deceptions have also been perpetrated at other German courts. They have all been made by a very mediocre Venetian painter in Rome, Giuseppe Guerra,24 who died last year. It is no wonder that foreigners have been duped by his work, as it also happened to a man who is very experienced in antiquities and extensively learned. This is the Jesuit Father Contucci,25 the man in charge of studies and of the museum in the Collegio Romano, who did a deal for more than forty works, in the certainty of having acquired treasures that had been brought from Sicily and even from Palmyra. For it was said that many of these paintings were sent to Naples and were sent back from there, to make the deception appear to be genuine. On some of them there have even been placed invented letters that bear no relationship to any known language, and for the explanation of which a second Kircher26 would have had to be found, if the deception had remained covered up\
for some time. But these paintings must be obvious to people, and I do not mean people who are experienced in art and antiquities, but those who have good taste, for the painter in question does not reveal the least knowledge of the customs and habits of the ancients or of their sense of form, but produced his works blindly, and created a new world, in such a way that if a single one of his works had been ancient, the whole system of knowledge about the ancients would have been turned upside down. Among the Jesuit\'92s paintings, for example, is Epaminondas being carried away from the Battle of Mantinea, and this hero is represented in a complete suit of armor made of iron, as was common in tournaments in the old days. In another there is a fight with animals in an amphitheater, and the praetor in charge or emperor is resting his arm on the handle of a bare dagger, like one from the Thirty Years War. This painter\'92s greatest productivity consists in making huge phalluses, and his idea of beauty is long drawn-out figures like spindles. Although this work was thoroughly recognized in Rome for what it was, an Englishman let himself be deceived two years ago into doing a deal in such works for six hundred scudi.\
After the paintings, the most beautiful statues, most remarkable busts, and a few small figures must be touched upon. Of the marble statues, apart from those two on horseback, two life-size female figures that have been given a place in the gallery deserve consideration because of their beautifully fashioned garments. In the courtyard of the museum there is a Mother of Nonius Balbus, as the preserved inscription on the supporting frame indicates, with a part of her garment or cloak thrown over her head and pinched to a point over her brow, to lend it some grace. The garment on the head of Tragedy in the Apotheosis of Homer in the Colonna Palace is pinched in the same way. This is a trivial detail that would not deserve to be commented on, and that I myself would hardly have noticed, if Cuper27 had not depicted this pinched fold as something special and had believed that he had here found what the Greeks call \'92OyKog, a top-piece of hair that rises above the brow of the tragic masks used by both sexes. The drawing used for his copper engraving had misled him, for on the marble figure this point is not so high, and is also not crossed over into a fold, as he depicts it.\
Apart from this a life-size Pallas should be noted above all the other statues in marble, and to all appearances this has not been created here but must be much older, from the much more ancient Greek style, or something similar. For it has a certain hardness, and in its garment there are parallel folds that have been pressed flat, as an indication of what I have said. Her aegis is strange; it is tied at the neck and then thrown over the arm, to serve instead of a shield in her battle against the Titans, for this goddess seems to be running, and has her right arm raised up, as though about to throw a spear. In Pompeii, in the small temple mentioned, there has also been found a Diana, which is undoubtedly\
archaic. This is described in detail in the History of Art. Among the Egyptian works a small male figure of black small-grained granite with a so-called modio on its head has been found, which, together with its old base, is three palms and three inches high by Roman measurement. It is carrying a round plaque of the same stone, which is two palms and seven inches in diameter.\
Here you will recall, Noble Count, that in the royal order enacted to permit me special access to the museum, the freedom was restricted to what was allowed to be seen. At the time I did not insist on an explanation of this condition. I believe, however, that this is to be understood as referring to those antiquities that are kept in the vaults beneath the royal castle, and concerns primarily an obscene figure. I have gained access to them, because I have managed to gain the trust of the man in charge. But the figure is shown to no one, unless they have the handwritten order of the king, and no one has tried to acquire it, so I did not want to be the first. This work in marble depicts a satyr with a goat, which is about a little more than three Roman palms high, and it is said to be very beautiful. Immediately after it was excavated it was sent in a sealed container to the king in Caserta, where his court was at that time, and then again handed over promptly, in its sealed container, to the royal sculptor in Portici, Joseph Canart,28 for safe keeping, under the strict order mentioned. So it is wrong if some Englishmen try to boast that they have seen this work.\
The largest metal statues represent emperors and empresses, and there are about ten of them, all larger than life-size. But they are mediocre and there is nothing to say about them, except to mention the ring on the ring finger of the right hand of some of them, on which a lituus is engraved. The most beautiful statues are six female figures, some of them life-size, some of them smaller, that are standing on the staircase leading to the museum, and three life-size male statues in the museum itself: an old Silenus, a young satyr, and a Mercurius. The female figures are those that stood around the large pond in the garden of the Herculanean villa, alternating with the marble busts. They are clothed and performing few actions, and also without any attached symbols that could cause one to give them a specific name. But they are ideal, and are all wearing a diadem. One appears to be about to unbutton the short cloak over her shoulder, or to have just fixed it with the button; another grasps the main part of her hair; a third raises up her dress a little in the way that dancers do. Silenus is lying on an animal skin over which a lionskin has been thrown, and snaps his fingers on the right hand, as a statue of Sardanapalus was also depicted. The young satyr is sitting and sleeping, with one arm hanging down. The Mercury however, which was the last to be found of all the statues, is the most beautiful of them all. He is also seated, and what is special about him is the wings that are attached to his feet, in such a way\
that the clasp of the strap, in the shape of a flat rose, is under the sole of the foot, to indicate that this god was not intended to walk but to fly.\
The busts are partly of marble and partly of metal. They are all life-size and at the present time still stand not in the museum but in an antechamber of the most blessed late queen, where they have been left so as not to deprive the castellan of the income with which they provide him. Among the most remarkable of them is an Archimedes, with a short frizzy beard; his name had already been written on it long ago in black paint or ink. Five years ago the first five letters could still be read as APXIM. But now these have almost completely faded away through frequent handling. Another bust of a man also had its name written on it, but there were scarcely three letters still visible: A0H. But these also no longer exist. On another head of a man the beard is tied up in a knot under the chin, as can be found on a head in the Campidoglio in Rome. Among the busts of women there is a beautiful older Agrippina, who has a garland around her hair as though made from long pearls.\
The busts in metal are partly life-size or bigger, and partly half natural size or less, and this museum is more excellent than all others in the world, especially with respect to the first kind. Six of the large heads should be especially noted, and indeed the first three primarily because of the work on the hair, the locks of which have been soldered on. The oldest one (which shows signs of being in the oldest style of art) has fifty locks, which seem to have been curled from one piece of wire in the thickness of a quill pen. The second one has sixty-eight locks, which are flat however, and are like a small strip of paper, when it has been rolled up with the fingers and is then pulled open again. The ones on the back of the neck have twelve curls. Both these works are of young heroes and without beards. The third one, however, with a long beard has only its side curls soldered on and is to be especially admired for its execution, which obviously far surpasses all the skill and ability of our artists. This is one of the most perfect works in the world: it is among the most beautiful objects of its kind to be seen. This head is generally called a Plato, and it is ideal. The fourth head is a Seneca, and is the most beautiful among various images of him in marble, the best of which is to be found in the Villa Medici. It could also be asserted that the artwork manifest in it is inimitable in our times, although Pliny reports that the art of working in metal declined completely under Nero. Both the other works are busts in the very ancient form, and have on the sides two protruding moveable bars or levers in metal for carrying them. One represents a young hero, and the other a female figure. They seem to be both by the same master, and the former has the name of the artist on it:\
AnOAAQNIOL APXIOY\
A0HNAIIOL\
EnQHLE\
\'93Apollonius, the son of Archia, from Athens, made this.\'94 I have written about the form of the word EEIDEEE in a suitable place in the History of Art. These must be works from the best period of art. Martorelli believes he was able to identify the head of this hero as an image of Alcibiades. Why? Because the artist is an Athenian, but the Roman prelate and archbishop\'92s deputy Bayardi has absolutely no reason to identify this head as a young Roman, nor the bust of a woman as a Roman woman.\
Among the small busts some are worthy of note because of the names of the people. One is an Epicurus and is completely identical to the one in the Campidoglio. Another is by his closest and immediate successor, Hermarchus ('Tppaxoq). And there is also a Zeno here with his name on it. Two busts of Demosthenes, the smaller one with his name on it, are especially worth noting, and which is included at the end of this Open Letter. The head of a young man without a beard made in relief and found in Spain cannot possibly therefore represent the famous Athenian orator, which Fulvius Ursinus29 and others after him take it to be. He could not have been famous before he had grown a beard.\
Apart from these busts a large number of small busts, in iron and in high relief on a round background as if on a shield, have been found in the storerooms of the museum. These could have been fixed to the wall or somewhere else by means of a soldered bracket. A bust of this kind was called a clupeum and was in the form of a shield. Some of them represented emperors and empresses. Two such busts, but in marble and life-size, can be found in the Villa Altieri, and one in the Campidoglio.\
Among the small figures, as with the statues and busts, there are things worth noting that are no less special, but many primarily in relation to customs, clothing, and jewelry. But as this requires much leisure, which few visitors can allow themselves, I refer the reader to the fourth chapter of the first part of my History of the Art of Antiquity and will content myself here with citing some figures that generally catch the eye. The most beautiful and largest among them, and one of the most recent works to be excavated, is an Alexander on horseback. An arm is missing from the figure and several legs from the horse, which can easily be replaced. The horse and figure together are about three and a half palms high and it is in no way inferior to any of the other statues and figures in relation to the artist\'92s grasp of the conception and workmanship. The eyes of the horse as well as those of the figure are of inlaid silver, and the reins are also of silver. And the base on which the horse stood is still there. Another horse, of the same size, but whose figure has gone missing, makes a pair with the other one, and is no less beautiful. Both have had their manes docked, and their gait lies in a diagonal line. But these works, because they have not yet been completed, are not generally put on display. Among those figures that visitors are allowed to observe are primarily a small Pallas and a Venus, both about one palm high. The former holds a dish (patera) in her hand, and her\
spear in the left hand, and the nails on the hands and feet, the bumps on the helmets and a strip on the hem of her dress have been skillfully inlaid with silver. The Venus has gold bands on her arms and legs (armillae and perisceledes) that have been wound out of wire, and she stands raising up her left leg, as though having just put on the band, or as though she wants to remove it. Also worth noticing is a parody or a representation of Aeneas made to look ridiculous, holding Anchises on his shoulders and Julius by the hand. All three figures have asses\'92 heads. Near this little group stands an ass on its hind legs with a cloak wrapped round it, made of silver and less than one inch high. Enthusiasts of art and experts alike have found that among all the small figures a priapus is worthy of their preferential examination. It is only the length of a finger, but the artwork on it is great, and it could be said that it serves as a school for the most learned anatomy; it has been so thoroughly studied that Michelangelo could not have done better himself. I have noticed from his drawings in Cardinal Alexander Albani\'92s cabinet that he strove to produce figures of the same size and in just as learned a way. This priapus makes a kind of gesture that is very common among the Italians but is completely unknown to Germans, so that it will be very difficult for me to explain it and to describe its significance on the figure. With the index finger of the right hand placed on the cheekbone the figure pulls down the lower eyelid at the same time as leaning its head to that side. This gesture must have been characteristic of ancient mimes and have had a manifold and graphic significance. The gesture is generally made in silence, and as though one wanted to say \'93Be careful, he\'92s about as refined as a block of wood!\'94 or \'93He wanted to make a fool of me, but I caught him out.\'94 Or also \'93You\'92re just the right person! It\'92s just what you need!\'94 With the left hand this figure makes a shape that the Italians call a fig, or fica, the gender of which is feminine (but the fruit is always called fico), and which indicates a woman, and this is indicated by placing the thumb between the index finger and the middle finger, so that it appears between the two like a tongue between the lips. This is also called far castagne, from the split, with which one can slit open the shell of a chestnut, to make them boil more quickly. And there is a small arm made of metal, which at the other end has the form of a priapus (male member), and other similar arms, which, however, are beaten flat, are to be found there. As is well known, these were known as amulets among the ancients, or pendants, which were worn to protect against curses, the evil eye, and magic, and this ridiculous and shameful superstition is still kept up among the common people of Naples. And I have been allowed to see various pria-puses of this kind on people who were wearing them on the arms or chest. Especially a half-moon shape in silver is worn on the arm, which the common people call luna pezzura, which means the pointed moon, and this is said to help against epilepsy. But it must be made from alms that one has collected oneself and carried to a priest who consecrates them. This abuse\
is well-known and is tolerated. The Athenians wore them on the heel-leathers of their shoes and below the ankle. Among such priapuses (members) there are others with wings and with little bells hanging on woven chains. At the back the member ends in the rear part of a lion, and with its left claw it scratches itself under the wing, as doves do when they are in love, in order, it is believed, to excite their sexual desire. The small bells are made of a metal mixed with silver, and their noise was probably intended to have an effect similar to that of the bells on the shields of the ancients. In the latter case they were intended to awaken fear, but in the former case they were intended to drive away evil spirits. The bells were also signs used to distinguish those who had been initiated into the secret rites of Bacchus.\
I would point out here in a few words that most of the works made of metal in this museum had to be put into fire in the process of completion and repair, and as a result have lost their venerable ancient rust, which is a greenish covering, identified in Italian by the word patina. They have been given a new similar color, but one that is very different from the old patina and looks really unpleasant on some of the heads. It is said that the head of the beautiful Mercury was found crushed into a hundred pieces, though this number is not to be taken literally. But even with the smallest amount of modern soldering, the old covering flakes off, and it would be deplorable to leave the figures in a shabby condition. And so it is necessary to imitate the effect created by the ancients as well as possible. And it has also been necessary to improve the works with inlaid silver.\
I want to cite especially two inscriptions that I have said I would include with this work. The first of them has not yet been made public. The other one is provided by Martorelli in his frequently cited book, which is nowadays not so easy to see, even in Naples. The first one stands on the wall of a house; this wall has been completely removed and placed in the rooms where the ancient paintings are. It contains an announcement concerning the leasing of baths and eating and drinking places, and is the only one of its kind:\
IN PRAEDIS IVLIAE SP \'95 F \'95 FELICIS LOCANTVR\
BALNEVM VENERIUM ET NONGENTVM TABERNAE PERGULAE\
CENACVLA EX IDIBVS AVG \'95 PRIMIS \'95 IN \'95 IDVS \'95 AVG \'95\
SEXTAS\
ANNOS CONTINVOS QVINQVE S*Q*D*L*E*N*C*\
A \'95 SVETTIVM \'95 VERVM \'95 AED\
On this wall there had been previously another inscription colored black that was probably a leasing announcement, and over which the\
present red-colored inscription had been put. I have been able to provide the actual forms of only some of the letters, because I had to record the subscription surreptitiously, as it was not possible to copy it openly. The individual letters in the sixth line would have been a well-known formula of the period, and can be interpreted thus:\
Si Quis Dominam Loci Eius Non Cognoverit Adeat Suettium Verum Aedilem\
which means \'93If anyone does not know the woman who owns this place or property, then they should present themselves to Aedilis Suettius Verus.\'94 The woman who owned it was called Julia, and her father was Spurius Felix. Among the ancient Romans, as with us, the leases were generally agreed for a five-year period, as can be discovered from Roman law books. The most common meaning of the word pergola was what we would call a bower, and in the most beautiful areas of Italy these are generally made in a decorative way with cane tied in a criss-cross fashion. This cane is very much stronger and longer than it is in Germany and in other countries on the other side of the Alps, partly because it grows thicker here, but primarily because it is cultivated and the soil around it is dug and loosened and generally better maintained. Thus a field of cane is regarded as a necessary and useful piece of land in country estates. In and around Rome all the vines are tied to canes. The other meanings of the word pergola, which are not relevant here, can be discovered elsewhere. Caenacula were in this case rooms in houses for drinking and entertainment for people who wanted to enjoy themselves. In relation to this it is worth taking note of an inscription that is cited in the index of Grater\'92s work but with no indication of its location:\
HVIVS \'95 MONVMENTI \'95 SI \'95 QVA \'95 MACERIA CLVSVM \'95 EST \'95 CVM \'95 TABERNA \'95 ET \'95 CENACVLO HEREDES \'95 NON \'95 SEQVETUR NEQVE \'95 INTRA \'95 MACERIAM \'95 HVMARI QVEMQVAM \'95 LICET31\
It is set into the wall of a tower at a crossing-point of the river Garigliano, known in ancient times as Liris.\
Some of the other inscriptions do not need an explanation. I leave it to others to make comments where they are needed.\
IVLIA \'95 GERM......\
AGGRIPPINAE \'95 TI \'95 CLA..........\
PONT \'95 MAX_______\
L \'95 MAM. . ,32\
DIVAE \'95 AVGVSTAE \'95\
L \'95 MAMMIVS \'95 MAXIMVS \'95 P \'95 S33\
ANTONIAE \'95 AVGVSTAE \'95 MATE! \'95 CLAVDI \'95 CAESARIS \'95 AUGUSTI \'95 GERMANICI \'95 PONTIF \'95 MAX L \'95 MAMMIVS \'95 MAXIMVS \'95 P \'95 S *34\
On a metal plaque is the following:\
MAMMIO \'95 MAXIMO \'95 AVGVSTALI \'95 MVNICIPES \'95 ET \'95 INCOLAE \'95 AERE \'95 CONLATO35\
BALBI \'95 L \'95 EVTYCHO LOCUM \'95 SEPVLTVR \'95 D \'95 D36\
Q \'95 LOLLIVS \'95 SCYLAX \'95 ET \'95 CALIDIA ANTIOCHVS MATER M \'95 GAUD I VS NASTA IOVI V \'95 S \'95 L \'95 M *37\
M \'95 CRASSI \'95 FRVGI \'95\
AQVA \'95 MARINA \'95 ET \'95 BALN AQVA \'95 DVLCI \'95 IANVARIVS \'95 L *38\
The following inscription on the plinth of a statue, probably of Venus, is not from the Herculanean vaults, but was found near Baiae and stands in the courtyard of the museum:\
VENERI \'95 PROBAE \'95 SANCTISS \'95 SACR \'95\
TI \'95 CLAVDIVS \'95 MARCION \'95\
SALVE \'95 MILLE \'95 ANIMARVM \'95 INLVSTRI \'95 CENARE \'95 OPVS \'95 SALVE PVLCHRI \'95 ONERIS \'95 PORTATRIX \'95 IN \'95 EXVPERABILE \'95 DONVM \'95 RERUM \'95 HVMANARVM \'95 DIVINARVMQVE \'95 MAGISTRA \'95 MATRIX \'95 SERVATRIX \'95 AMATRIX \'95 SACRIFATRIX \'95\
SALVE \'95 MILLE \'95 ANIMARVM \'95 INLVSTRI \'95 CENARE \'95 OPVS \'95 SALVE \'95\
This inscription is from the later period, and the meter is incorrect in many respects, as can be found in other inscriptions of the same age. The third line is very obscure. Martorelli, on page 373, reads it in the following order: salve Venus, opus est nos cenare cum illustri mille aniarum, salve, and he explains it as follows: luvat nos commisceri (jiiyvuOai) cum innumera\
gente illustri elegantique forma praedita.40 This explanation of his is based on die meaning of the word coenare, which he believes can be found in Suetonius in the epigram for the supper of Augustus (Aug. c. 72), known as ooioskcitoc,41 at which the invited persons were dressed as the twelve gods and goddesses and Augustus as Apollo. In this the fourth line reads:\
Dum nova Divorum coenat adulteria.42\
He refers to Martial,43 where this word is said to be found in many places with this obscene meaning, but which I can find nowhere in this poet. On a carved stone in raised white letters there is the following:\
AETOTCIN\
A0EAOTCIN\
AEEETroCAN\
Sic\
TipEAICOI\
They speak; whatever they want, let them say it;\
why should I care.\
Among many so-called seals or stamps made of metal I will cite just one, because of the way the letters are rim into each other:\
M.cA tl'IHLKOldr\
M \'95 STATILI \'95 PHILERONIS \'bb44\
In this first part of the fourth section, useful things, which I will divide into two types, follow art objects in the narrower sense; I shall first mention those that are necessary and then secondly those utensils that have been introduced through luxury and opulence.\
Concerning the first type I shall start with loaves of bread (which I can permit myself to include in this category). Two of these have been preserved whole, and both of the same size, with a diameter of one palm and two inches and five inches thick. Both have eight incisions, that means they have both been divided by a cross shape, and then these four parts have been cut through again. Two loaves on a Herculanean painting are depicted in this way. The one that was found first was engraved in copper and included in a report of Herculaneum by an unknown author, which was printed by Gori. The loaves of the most ancient Greeks were divided in the same way, which were therefore called oKtapicopoi by Hesiod, which means, as others have explained, something with eight incisions. But sometimes the loaves were only cut in a cross shape, as I have noted elsewhere, and such a loaf was therefore called a quadra,\
Et mihi diuiduo findetur munere quadra45\
or TSTpaxpucpoc, front which derived the saying aliena viuere quadra, \'93to live front other tables.\'94\
In addition to bread I wish to consider wine vessels, which are of two kinds: the larger ones are called dolia and the smaller ones amphorae, and both are made of terracotta. Drums bound with sticks or staves were not unknown to the ancients. In the museum of the Collegio Romano there is to be found an earthenware lamp on which there are two people carrying a drum bound with hoops on a pole. The same kind of thing can be seen on carved stones, as I have mentioned elsewhere, and also on the Trajan Column and the Column of Antoninus, but it seems that they were primarily used in the field. Instead of our barrels the ancients had dolia, in the form of a round pumpkin, and these held generally the contents of eighteen amphorae, as can be seen from the measurement carved on such a vessel in the Villa Albani. It was this kind of barrel in which Diogenes lived and which he rolled up and down during the siege of Corinth. The opening is about one palm in diameter. In ancient Herculaneum a cellar was discovered with earthenware barrels of this type fixed into the walls, from which it can be concluded that the ancients made their wine in a different way than we do. For the wine could not run directly out of the wine-press into the barrel, as happens in some places, where it has room to ferment and foam. It would have been necessary to pour the must into these immovable vessels with buckets, and as they could not contain very much, there would not have been much room left for the must to ferment. From this it can understood why the ancients had to let their wines mature for many years, so that the wine in Albano near Rome, according to Pliny, could not be drunk until after at least twenty years, but which is nowadays good and can be drunk in its first year. It would thus seem to be the case that the wines of the ancients remained cloudy before reaching a great age, which made it necessary for them to strain the wine at the table or beforehand, using a device called a	colum\
vinarium.46 Two of them are to be found in the Herculanean Museum, made from a white metal and in the most decorative way. It consists of two deep round dishes, half a palm in diameter, with a flat handle, such that one fits exactly into the other. The handles fit so close together that it appears to be just one vessel. The upper part is completely pierced through with holes according to a special design, and every time the wine was required it was poured through this into the lower dish, which is not pierced with holes, and from this it was poured into a cup.\
The smaller wine vessels, amphorae, are almost cylindrical, such that the lower end tapers to a point, and above they have two handles. In Herculaneum and Pompeii different kinds have been found with writing painted on them, and I recall the inscription on one of them:\
HERCVLANENSES NONIO___\
The Herculaneans put the name of Nonius, their praetor, on their vessels, as the Romans put the name of their consul on theirs. Up until fairly recently it was the custom in these regions, when a child was born, to bury earthenware vessels full of wine, and to leave them unopened until the child got married. These vessels are pointed at the bottom, to hold them firmly in the earth, and also in Pompeii some have been found standing in the holes of a flat vault still standing in a cellar. This cellar is divided into two areas, one above and one below, by the flat vault or horizontal wall, which is eight Roman palms wide. The vault of the upper space is convex, as is usual, and both areas are no more than the height of a man. The wine in one of these vessels has become petrified and is brownish-black in color, which has led some to believe that this container was set up to smoke the wine, as the ancients used to do, to purify it and mature it more quickly. But to me the low space in the lower part of the cellar seems to contradict this. This wine that has been changed into a hard substance is on display in the museum.\
Also belonging to this category of useful things are the tripods, not like those of which I shall speak later, but as they originally were, by which I understand a stand with three legs, like the table on which Jupiter enjoyed his meal in the story of Philemon and Baucis.\
. . . mensam succinct tremensque\
Ponit anus, mensae sed erat pes terius impar,\
Testa parem facit.\
(Ovid, Metamorphosesi7)\
For among the Greeks tripods were not only things to put over fires but also tables, and even in the most luxurious times they were called that, as we can see from the magnificent processions of Ptolemy Philadelphus in Alexandria and King Antiochus Epiphanes in Antioch, as described by Athenaeus.48 The latter were called d7tupoi, the former 8p7tupiPijTai and Xocipoyooi.49\
Particularly among those tripods that were used in making sacrifices, two of the most beautiful discoveries should be mentioned especially, both of them about four palms high. One was found in Herculaneum, and its three legs are formed of three priapuses, each of which is joined to a goat\'92s foot ending in a single hoof. The tails run horizontally from the back of the os sacrum and loop around a ring in the middle of the tripod, by which the whole is held together, as with the crossbar in ordinary tables. The other tripod was found in Pompeii later than the one I mentioned, and is made in a wonderfully beautiful way. There is a sphinx sitting on each of the legs, where they bend, as though in a gesture of respect, and the side hair of the sphinx, which would normally hang down over the cheeks, has been taken up, so that it goes under the diadem and then falls down again over it. This could, especially on a tripod for Apollo,\
be making some allegorical reference to the dark and mysterious utterances of the oracle of that god. Around the broad edge of the pan there are cut-off heads of rams joined together with garlands of flowers and worked in relief And all the parts of it are fully carved with decorations. In these holy tripods the pan into which the pieces of coal were tipped was made of terracotta; one of these, the one from Pompeii, has been preserved together with the ashes. In one of the temples of Herculaneum, the excavation of which, for some reason I am unaware of, was not completed, a large rectangular heating pan or stove made of metal, of the kind which in Italy are placed in large rooms to heat them, was found last year, 1761. It was the size of a medium-sized table, and stood on lion\'92s paws. The edge of it was artistically lined with foliage made of various metals, such as copper, iron ore, and silver. The bottom of the pan had a strong iron grate, but below and inside it was set with tiles, which also lined the sides, such that the coals did not come into contact with the grate from above and could not fall down through them. However, this object was brought out broken completely into pieces.\
Also belonging to the category of necessary utensils are the lamps, to which the ancients tried to apply some decorative quality and splendor, as there were few wrought or cast lamps and they were not commonly in use. In the museum, of all the different kinds there are not only earthenware ones but primarily ones made of metal, and as the decorative objects of the ancients are seldom without significance, special allusions can be found on them. Among those made of terracotta the largest represents a small rowing boat, with seven openings for the same number of wicks on each side. The container for pouring oil into the lamps is also shaped like a little ship, closed at the top and curved, with a pointed nozzle, and at the other end a small shallow dish, through the middle of which oil is put into this pouring vessel. Among those made of metal, on the back part of one of the largest lamps there is a bat with its wings spread out, as a symbol of night. The wings have been made most artistically with a very fine fabric of tendons, small veins, and pieces of skin. On another a mouse is sitting close to the nozzle, as though lying in wait to lick the oil, and in the same position on another lamp there is a rabbit munching on some cabbage. The splendor of their lamps can be seen on a metal stand: on a rectangular outwardly folded base a naked child two palms high stands holding a lamp that hangs on three chains that have a fourfold weave. With the other hand it raises up another chain of the same kind, on which hangs a hook for the wick. Next to it there stands a column with grooves, which turn around in a spiral, and on top of it instead of the capital there is a mask, which also serves as a lamp, such that the wick would come out of the mouth and the oil would be poured in through the crown of the head, the opening of which is closed by a flap.\
Among the ancients the lamps were supported on candelabra, which were like our gueridons, and these were also made in the most decorative\
way. The shaft is fluted and the lower dish generally rests on three lion\'92s paws, and this dish as well as the upper one were turned on a lathe and carved with delicate oval shapes around the edge and floral decoration on the surface. The lower dish of the largest candelabra has a diameter of one palm and one inch by Roman measurement. I believe there are about a hundred in the museum, and the largest is about eight and a half palms high. The whole of Rome cannot offer one single metal candelabra. Through these we can now understand what Vitruvius meant when, among his complaints about the spoilt taste of his times, he said that they made columns like candelabra, that is, as thin and ill-proportioned as the shaft of candelabra.\
Another necessary utensil is weighing scales, of which none have been found, neither in these excavations nor elsewhere, with two weighing dishes, as they are to be seen on some coins. They are all like those we call an \'93Unzelt,\'94 from \'93Unze\'94 (ounce), that is a weighing rod or pole, on which the weight increases proportionately the nearer it is pushed to the end of the rod. The weight usually consists of a small bust of a deity. On one such scales it is a woman\'92s head representing Africa, like that one sees on coins. On one weighing dish one can read TI \'95 CLAVD \'95 EXACT \'95 CVRA \'95 AEDIL.50 These scales all have a weighing dish, instead of the hook on similar ones that we use, and this dish hangs on three or four artistically made chains that are drawn through a round plate so that the chains can be held together closer to or further from the dish. There are large numbers of weights in the museum, of all kinds. I will just cite two long flat rectangular lead weights, of the kind that are still in use among women fishmongers in these areas. On the side of one are the raised letters EME, and on the other HABEBIS.\
The weighing dishes remind me of parts of the wheel of a cart that lie in the courtyard of the museum, especially of a metal wheel rim forged from one piece, which has a diameter of six Roman palms and is not quite two inches wide but only one inch thick. The wood that has remained attached to the iron has become petrified. Also preserved from this wheel is a piece of the cylinder that runs round the axle. It has been mounted with iron, and a metal51 plate has been put over the iron, and this has been affixed with flat-headed metal nails. In the museum itself there is a lion\'92s head on a piece of a metal plate out of which it is springing, and its mouth has not been bored through and so cannot have served to pour water from a well or into baths. I surmise that this is part of a cap that was screwed onto the axle on the outer side of the wheel, so that it would not come off. In this place on ordinary carts, as with ours, iron wedges, called aciarini (linchpins) in Italian, and known among the Greeks as 7ixdpa^ovia, spPotan, and evijtaxxa, were stuck on the outside of them, and the bent rectangular plate on it, to keep the dust off, already existed in Homer\'92s time and was called imepxepia. The outer end of an axle with\
such caps, with a lion\'92s head in relief, can be seen preserved on some ancient pieces, especially on the triumphal chariot of Marcus Aurelius in the Campidoglio. So such screwed-on steel caps as have come into common use in our own times, especially on carriages, are nothing new, and those of the ancients were mainly of metal. The shafts of the carts were also decorated on the extreme end with carved lion heads, and it seems to me that Count Caylus is wrong when he asserts that the chariots in the races of the ancients had no shafts. I will prove the opposite to have been the case at that time from the evidence of memorials. For his instruction I include below a passage cited from Pindar. More proof can be found in Sophocles\'92s Electra and Euripides\'92s Hippolytus.\
It was not my intention to talk about the devices on the doors of the ancients, extensive comments on which I was planning to save for the second edition of my Remarks on Architecture. I cannot resist, however, touching upon it to some extent. First, one must be aware of the fact that the doors of the ancients did not hang on hooks but moved at the bottom on the threshold and at the top in the crossbeam. This was by means of what we must call door hinges (cardines), but we do not really have a term for it. And there is no word in any modern language that is convenient and suitable to use. The beam of the moveable door which was against the wall was set, both at the bottom and at the top, in a cap made of metal, which had a pointed projecting part on the inside, to prevent the wooden part from turning. This cap is usually in the form of a cylinder. But there exist also rectangular ones that have two projecting joints on all sides, to fix the boards, which strong doors were made of, firmly on all sides. These doors were hollow on the inside. The rectangular piece is shaped as shown:\
Fig. 10. Sketch by Winckelmann.\
This cap stood on a thick plate of metal, which was wedge-shaped. \\	/	And above and below, it was filled in with lead, and on this the\
cap moved such that if it had a hemispherical form (as A in the diagram), then there was a hollow depression in the plate in which the convex part could move, as in the door of the Pantheon. And if the cap was open below, then the plate had a raised hemisphere that fitted exacdy into the opening of the cap. This cap together with its plate was called a cardo. There are some in the museum that are one palm in diameter, which indicates the size of the doors, and they weigh twenty, thirty, and up to forty pounds. With this idea in mind, many passages in works of the ancient\
writers become clearer, something that would not have been possible with a mistaken or confused conception of this part of the doors. If the doors of the ancients had two wings (bivalvae), then either each wing hung in its fittings in the way described, as in the Pantheon in Rome, or they turned only on one side, and the doors could be folded together. These folding doors were closed by means of a metal latch, the screw of which was in the wood but visible. But both the pointed rods of these hinges were not visible and were covered on both sides by the double doors. This can be seen on one of these central hinges, on which petrified wood has remained attached to the rods on both sides.\
I will conclude this account of useful objects with a kind of sandal that was fixed together with cords and has been found in various sizes for children and for grown-up persons. The Licanians still tie this kind of sandal on their feet.\
Among the useful objects of the second kind I will begin with a few special vessels, and the most elegant and beautiful are those that served or were intended for holy customs and practices. One of the most decorative objects seems to have been a water bucket used in sacrifices (praefericu-lum), which is two palms and two inches high, with a moveable curved handle for carrying it, which fits the rim exactly when it is let down. Like the vessel itself the handle is carved on the broad side with foliage and on the outer edge with other decorations. Apart from this handle it has two large and two small grips. The large ones represent, where they project downward, the head and shoulders of a woman, which is carried on a swan with its wings spread out, all of this done in relief. The lower and smaller grips end at the bottom in swans\'92 necks. This vessel was found almost completely surrounded with molten iron, a piece of which has been preserved that shows the impression of the body of the vessel. In the excavation site a large pile of metal nails was found, which had not yet been used, together with a few inkwells full of ink, so that it seems that there was a general store in that place. The large gold Augustus coin that is displayed engraved in copper at the end of the preliminary report of the second volume of Herculanean paintings was also found here. On another such vessel, which is a little smaller and of the same form, there is, on the lower fastening of a hand grip, the figure of Amor made in relief, with a drinking bowl (cantharus) in one hand and a horn for drinking in the other. Bowl, horn, and wings are all made of silver. Shapes made in terracotta have also been found, with hand grips on the vessels that have been cast. I recall here a long round vessel, like a small bucket made of silver, with a handle for carrying it, on which, if I am not mistaken, Hyllus is represented in chased metal, showing him being abducted by the nymphs when Hercules sent him out to fetch water.\
The sacrificial bowls (paternae) used for libation were another kind of holy vessel, and there are a countless number of them here, most of them\
made of a light-colored metal, and turned on a lathe on the outside as well as on the inside in the most decorative fashion. In some there is in the middle a kind of coin engraved with relief work. I remember a Victoria on a quadriga. The handle of it is round and has grooves along its length, ending in a ram\'92s head. Instead of this some of them have a swan\'92s head and neck. On one of the largest and most beautiful, which lies next to the beautiful Pompeiian tripod, the handle consists of a standing swan, which is fixed to the bowl by its outspread feet. Previously bowls of this kind have all been regarded as sacrificial bowls. But through one of the excavations here it has been discovered that bowls of that form were also used in bathing establishments, as evidenced by a bundle of scrapers (strigiles) that was fixed, together with a patera, with a broad handle, to a flat metal ring, as we do with keys. These bowls will have been used to pour water over the body. Others, which were deeper bowls with a wide handle, were kitchen utensils, and similar to those we use as casseroles.\
Among many of the items excavated here that convince us that very few new things have been made that have not existed before are also some silver cups, with an upper and lower dish, in the same form and size as the ones we use for tea, and they are extremely well made and carved. These vessels were used in the same way as ours are today: they were used for drinking warm water. And the Romans had some houses where it was consumed, like our coffee houses. There are three pairs of them in the museum.\
These silver bowls give me the opportunity to talk about a silver vessel that has the form of a mortar and weighs about one and a half pounds. Homer is represented on it in flat relief being carried on a flying eagle. He supports his chin with his right hand, with his head raised as though in lofty reflections. In his left hand he holds a rolled script, which is his poetic work. Above his head hover swans below hanging garlands of flowers. This part, but without the subsequent part, Count Caylus has depicted in the third volume of his collection of antiquities, as it was conveyed to him by a drawing made from memory. At the bottom on both sides two female figures are sitting on oak foliage. The one on the right is armed with a shield and a spear, and a short sword under her arm, and represents the Iliad; the one on the left, with a conical hat without a brim, such as Ulysses wore, has one leg crossed over the other, and is touching her brow with her right hand, as though deep in thought, and represents the Odyssey. Martorelli considered these figures to be men, but he corrected this in the supplements to his book. But Signor Bayardi,52 who was paid lavishly for describing these treasures and could observe and study them at greater leisure than others, irresponsibly makes Homer into a Julius Caesar, who, even if he had not been familiar with an image of him, at least did not wear a beard. Next to his Caesar he places a weeping Roma, which he imagines the Iliad to be, and cannot make anything out of the figure of Odyssey except a soldier. In another place Hercules shooting at\
the Stymphalian birds is dubbed a man hunting aquatic birds. More than once he confuses men and women. On a small oval silver plate there is a satyr playing a lyre in chased metal. As soon as I saw it, it reminded me of the flute player of Aspendus53 among the statues of Gaius Verres, who, as Cicero says, is clearly playing for himself, without worrying whether he is being heard by anyone. This figure is equally engrossed in the harmony.\
Vessels that were produced as luxury items were those in which the ancients kept, fed, and fattened up a kind of field mouse that lived in woods of chestnut trees. These vessels are made of terracotta and are about three palms high and three and a half palms in diameter, with a medium-sized opening, and inside them semicircular troughs, also of terracotta, are placed at different levels for the feed of this animal. This vessel or container was called a glirarium, from glis, which is the name of the animal, and from which the Germans and other peoples derived a name to denote dormice. I have noticed that these animals are not known beyond the Alps; for this reason some foreign scholars have imagined that the Romans fed dormice and ate them as a special delicacy. This false supposition was made by Sloane54 in his preliminary report for his description in the English language of the island of Jamaica, and Lister,55 in his comments on Apicius\'92s book on cookery, is no better informed. In Italian this animal is called ghiro, from glis, and is still eaten today, but only at great banquets. For it is not common, and I know that the House of Colonna gives them away as gifts. The animal buries itself in winter and during that time it lies there in a constant slumber, without taking any food, and that is why it has been used by modern artists as a symbol of sleep, as one can see it represented by Algardi next to the statue of Sleep in black marble in the Villa Borghese.\
Items to play with and for entertainment can also be included here. The flutes used by the ancients deserve some mention here. They were made from bones, ivory, and also metal, and, like ours, consisted of various parts, but with the difference that the pieces or parts did not fit together with joints but were pulled onto a tube made of finely turned wood, to which the petrified wood is still attached, as can be seen on metal flute pieces in the museum. In the museum at Cortona a flute made of ivory has been fitted onto a silver tube.\
Evidence is provided there of entertainments in the Greek style by a small ivory plaque in this language with the word AICXYAOY. I do not know in which of the buried places it was found. This plaque is a tessera, which bears the name of the famous tragedian Aeschylus, and shows that his tragedies were performed in those places. These tesserae were distributed, as free leaflets about operas and comedies are today, by the person who was producing the shows at his expense. This is the only tessera with the name of a Greek writer for the theater. There are others also made of ivory but with only numbers on them in the Collegii Romano.\
One unique object is a discus made of metal, which has a diameter of eight inches and has a hole in the middle, the circumference of which is smaller on one side, so that the finger can be placed in it more firmly when the discus is thrown. This way of throwing the discus was also not known before. There were, however, also discuses without holes in the middle, like the one held pressed against the thigh on a statue that was in the Verospi house in Rome and was sold recently. Of the same kind is the discus of one palm and seven and half inches in diameter on relief work in the Villa Albani, which I have mentioned elsewhere. Incidentally this was what we would call a chivalrous game, and among the Greek heroes it was especially practiced by Diomedes. It has also become a common practice in England.\
To this category of practical items I wish to add a tragic mask, made of marble, with a high hairpiece that, as the holes bored into it around the sides show, was one of those that were tied over the face of someone who had died, to demonstrate after death the truth of what Petronius said: omnis mimdus agit histrioniam.56 A more recent mask made of terracotta for the same purpose is to be found in the museum of the Collegii Romani. In earlier times it was the custom in France to wear masks at night while sleeping, too, to protect the skin from the heavy air in closed rooms. I hope that this fashion will soon return.\
Concerning the state, and as a sign of noble birth, there were gold seals, which children generally wore up to a certain age, and this museum has two of them on show. But this was not just an accessory worn by young boys, as is generally believed: men returning in triumph also wore a seal on the neck, and in the explanation of some difficult points of mythology, customs, and ancient history that I have drawn up in the Italian language, I shall demonstrate by reference to an unusual memorial that they were also worn by women.\
As a sign of the rank of some people with high authority among the Romans they had sellae curules, two of which are to be found in the museum. They are made of metal (in Rome they were generally made of ivory) and are one palm and seven inches high and two palms and seven inches wide. They consist of round legs in the form of a cross, which looks like this:\
H\
And at the bottom they end in an idealized animal\'92s head with a long beak, on which they stand.\
I shall not mention here the many heads in metal of lions and other animals, out of which, in the baths and also in the houses, water used to run. And also surgical instruments and many implements that are partly known, but the uses of which are also partly unknown, can only be\
described with difficulty without illustration, and even with this can be only incompletely understood.\
Finally I shall mention some feminine implements, such as mirrors, needles for fixing the hair and making buns, bracelets, and earrings. There are two mirrors there, a round one and a long rectangular one. The round one must be about eight inches across. Both are made of metal that has been polished and smoothed down. Bayardi claimed to have found two mirrors with long handles there, which I have neither seen nor been able to find. Generally the mirrors of the ancients were round, like some of our portable mirrors, and on a carved stone in the Stoss Museum there is a Venus holding such a mirror by its cover. Seneca mentions extremely large mirrors in which the whole person could be seen.\
Among the silver needles for making buns, which served for winding plaits round at the back, there are four that are especially large and well-made. For this was a special part of women\'92s ornaments. The castrated priests of Cybele also fixed their hair in a bun with a needle of this sort. The largest one, about eight inches long, has, instead of the head, a Corinthian capital, on which there stands a Venus who has just grasped her hair with both hands. Next to her stands Eros, holding a round mirror in front of her. Roman women also used to hold up mirrors to the statues of their goddesses on the occasion of their festivals. And the silver needles for making buns used by the country women around Naples are still of the same length. On another such needle, which likewise ends in a Corinthian capital, Eros and Psyche stand in an embrace. Another has two busts on top, and on the smallest there stands a Venus, who, leaning on the cippus of a Priapus, is raising her right leg and seems to want to hold her foot with her left hand.\
There are bracelets made of metal and gold in the museum, and all in the shape of a snake; I do not recall having seen any that were laid around the upper part of the arm. They were of the smaller type, which hung down over the knuckles. The earrings in gold resemble the top of an acorn with the small raised bumps, and they stand with the open side toward the ear. The women in this area still wear them in the same form nowadays.\
Among the utensils that I have referred to above the paterae should be especially mentioned: they are made from a white metal compound, which at first glance seems to be silver. It also has a green coating like the latter. And, who knows, it may be one of the two famous types of metal known as Corinthian or Syracusan. I know that some consider a gold-colored metal used in some coins of the first size to be Corinthian metal. But this opinion is as uncertain as the ridiculous assertion that the origin of this metal was in the conquest of that city.\
Primary consideration concerning ancient implements and especially vessels should be given to the decorative quality of them, in which\
respect all our artists are inferior to the ancients. Ail their forms were created according to the principles of good taste and resemble a beautiful youth whose gestures, without any intention or thought on his part, embody gracefulness. This can be extended even to the handles of vessels. Imitation of them could introduce a completely different concept of taste and lead us away from the artificial to what is natural, which subsequently can become manifest in art. The beauty of these vessels is created by the gently curved forms, which are here, as with the beautiful bodies of youths, in the process of development rather than completed, so that our gaze does not rest on the completely semicircular areas or become fixed in corners or at points. The sweet sensation in our eyes at such forms is like the feeling of soft delicate skin, and we easily comprehend it, as though it were blended together. As what is not difficult pleases us by the ease with which we comprehend it, and what is forced, like exaggerated praise by others, must displease us for the opposite reason, because we do not believe ourselves able to attain that quality, and as indeed nature makes our path easier (for generally what is natural is less expensive than its opposite), then our feeling and reflection should lead us to the beautiful simplicity of the ancients. But these kept to what had once been recognized as being beautiful, because the Beautiful is something unique, and they did not make any alterations, as was the case with their garments. But we, on the other hand, did not want to become fixed, in this respect as in others, and we fumbled around in stupid imitation, all the time knocking down again what we have built, as children do.\
The second part of the fourth section of this open letter, which deals with the Herculanean writings, deserves our very special attention, so much more because before me no one has provided a report about them. Concerning these writings, first of all, information must be provided about the excavation of them, and second, an explanation must be given of the material of which they consist, together with their form, shape, and character, third, of the type and manner of the writing on them, and fourth, of how they have been developed.\
The excavation of them did not promise very much, compared with what they were later shown to be; the workers complained like the two bald men who found a comb in their path:\
Sed fato inuido\
Carbonem, vt ajunt, pro thesauro accepimus.\
(Phaedrus, book 5, fable 6)57\
For they regarded the writings as burnt wood and pieces of coal, and thus many were cast aside and thrown away. A similar thing happened here as in Brazil with diamonds, which, before they were recognized, were regarded as being nothing but small pebbles. The order of the layers in\
which they were subsequently found laid on top of each other was the only circumstance that attracted their attention until they found letters on them, and it caused them to consider that perhaps they were not just pieces of coal.\
The place where they were brought to light was a small room in the Herculanean villa mentioned before, which two men can reach across with outstretched arms. Around it on the wall there were cabinets, as are usually found in archives, and at a man\'92s height, in the middle of the room there stood another such rack to hold scripts on both sides, in such a way that one could go round it. The wood of this rack had been burnt to cinders, and when it was touched it fell apart, as can easily be imagined. A few of these scrolls were found to be of a coarser paper, tied together like those which were called emporetica by the ancients, and which presumably constituted the parts and books of a whole work. The scripts, as soon as they were recognized as such, were carefully gathered together, and more than a thousand pieces were found, most of which are stored in the Portici museum in a cabinet with closed glass doors. Many, however, are said to be still lying in vaults below the museum, where the ruins of statues and other works have been deposited.\
The material of these scripts is papyrus, or Egyptian reeds, a plant that is also called deltos (AeXrog) after the area where it grew most commonly. It seems that the name for scripts in the Holy Scripture was also derived from this word, for in Jeremiah, as far as I can roughly remember, the word \'93deltoid\'94 (5e^xoi) means a book. Nowadays this plant is called \'93berd\'94 by the native people of the country. It was unique to this country, but, according to Strabo, they also started growing it in Italy, where it completely died out. And Targioni,58 a doctor who is still living in Florence, is very much in the wrong when he asserts the belief that that reed, which is used for covering glass bottles, could be what was formerly known as papyrus.\
Among those who travelled in Egypt Alpinus59 is the only one who has described this plant. Pococke and others pass over it in silence. It grows on the banks of the Nile and in marshy places, and pushes up a stalk that reaches to two cubits, as Pliny cites from Theophrastus. According to Alpinus it is six to seven cubits. The stalk is triangular, and on top it has a crown like hair; it was compared by the ancients to a thyrsus. This so-called Egyptian reed was very useful to the native people. The pulp from the stalk provided them with nourishment, and from the stalks themselves they made ships, the form of which can be seen on carved stones and other Egyptian monuments. Bundles of them were tied together like rushes, and these were then joined to other ones until they acquired the shape of boats or ships. The most useful part of this plant, however, was the thin skin on which they could write. And it is on this very point that the reports of the ancient writers are not sufficiently clear and do not\
satisfy us sufficiently. Several people, such as Voss,60 have therefore imagined that the papyrus used for writing was taken from the leaves of this plant. But others, such as Vesling,61 have had an even more erroneous conception, believing that it was prepared from the roots. The roots of all plants consist of small fibers and have a quality like wood, and therefore they cannot be rolled up into thin sheets. But the latter writer imagined that the roots were cooked to a pulp and then prepared in such a way as to be poured out, in the way that paper is made nowadays. Others, such as Salmasius62 and Guilandinus,63 come closer to the truth when they assert the belief that the sheets of papyrus were taken from the stalks, which can be flaked off in thin layers, so that those layers closest to the pulp in the stalks provide the best papyrus, and the outer layers provide the worst. This is confirmed by looking at the Herculanean scripts, which are made up of sheets that are the width of four fingers (as I shall describe more clearly in what follows), and, I believe, indicate the circumference of the stalk. So I should probably come round to thinking that there is a mistake in Pliny\'92s text when he says that the difference is to be found in the quality of the paper and in its width. The best, he says, has a width of thirteen inches, and that which was called hieratica was eleven inches; that called fanniana was ten inches, and the one from Sais had less, while the worse kind was six inches. My conjecture is that the word \'93width\'94 should be replaced by the word \'93length,\'94 for the stalk of the plant must, for the most part, have had the same thickness. And I cannot imagine how on some it could have had a circumference of thirteen cubits but on others one of six, because the width of the papyrus must have been the same as the circumference of the stalk. But the length of the papyrus must be calculated according to the length of the stalk.\
Meanwhile, I do not want to become involved in an examination of each individual part of Pliny\'92s report, so as not to provide speculations instead of reports. I believe, for example, what he says about scripts made of two and even three sheets which have been stuck together, especially as Guillandinus assures us that he has seen such scripts made of Egyptian papyrus. The Herculanean scripts consist of only one single sheet. I leave it to others to make the accounts of the ancients clearer, from the correct report that I shall give of these scripts, if they want to know more than is visible to the eyes.\
Concerning writings on Egyptian papyrus, I have seen, apart from the Herculanean ones, various documents in the Vatican Library, and a sheet with Greek writing by a Father of the Church in the library of the Theatines in St. Apostoli in Naples. Mabillon64 mentions the speeches of Saint Augustus written on parchment with leaves of Egyptian papyrus interleaved here and there, which were in the library of President Petau.65 Perhaps these can be found among the manuscripts of Queen Christina in the Vatican, but as I am outside Rome, I cannot obtain any information about that at the moment.\
Of the form, condition, and character of these scripts it should be noted that they are almost all of the same length, that is, one span, and some are two fingers across, others three to four fingers. But there are some that are half a span long. Most of them are shriveled up and wrinkled like a goat\'92s horn. This has been caused by the heat, which caused them to be charred, for they are either black or very dark grey. When they were covered by the material from the mountain they did not remain completely cylindrical but acquired an uneven and bumpy round shape. At both ends they resemble petrified pieces of wood on which the rings can be clearly distinguished, but on the scripts there are many more rings and they are much finer. No example of a rectangular book has been found.\
The papyrus is thin, even thinner than a poppy leaf, and not completely in its former state, but it is as though the fire has drawn the material out of it. When one is working with it a single breath of air can cause damage to it. But this papyrus must always have been very thin, as is obvious on many scripts that are not very wrinkled and were rolled up as tightly as they appear to us now. For as these could not have been pressed more closely together by the heat than they already were, and nor did they lose any of their width or length, they remained without wrinkles and without being spread out flat.\
Such a scroll consists of many small strips that are as wide as one\'92s hand and have been stuck together, so that one overlaps the other to the width of one finger, and this joint has not become undone. There were special people who stuck these sheets to each other, called glutinatores, whose skill should not be ranked among those of the most common workers, as the Athenians erected a statue to a man called Philtatius66 because he showed them how to stick scripts, or, which is more credible, because he invented a special type of book glue.\
This strip of papyrus made of many pieces fixed together was sometimes just rolled up by itself and in other cases round a thin tube made of wood or bone, according to the evidence of a Horace scholar, and this tube appears to be thinner and stronger in the middle of various scrolls. This was presumably what the ancients called the navel (umbilicum) of the books, for it is in the middle just as the navel is on a human body, and its opening is similar to it. This can be shown from a passage in Martial, where he says of a small scroll that it is no bigger than a navel:\
Quid prodest mihi tarn macer libellus,\
Nullo crassior ut sit umbilico,\
Si totus tibi tridio lagatud67\
This passage has not, as I interpret it, been correctly understood, for it would be a comparison without any connection if it implied the navel of a human being. It is just as unlikely to refer to the decoration on the\
cover of books, but it must be understood to refer to the small roll in the middle of the scroll. The poet wishes to say, therefore, that this scroll is no stronger than the small roll or stick around which scripts are wound. It should therefore be ad umbilicum adducer and ad umbilicum per venire, which means to finish a script so that it can be given its roll, and also to read it right to the end, that is, as far as the roll.\
Consequently, it must be imagined that, as the inner stick served to roll it open, a second stick or small tube was necessary, to roll up again the rolled out script, with the former fixed at the end and the latter at the beginning, so that the small tube that was previously on the inside came to lie on the outside, and so it alternated. On the Herculanean scripts the second tube cannot be found, for as the outer sheet or layer is missing, at least on those that have been examined, then this small tube must have gone missing with it. It also cannot be seen on the painted scrolls on some Herculanean paintings, though the inner tube can be seen. But the ancients talked of large numbers of writings with such small tubes, and this could confirm my conjecture. Further it has been noticed that in some scripts there is something in the hollow part of the tube that fills it up, and that seems to be a small stick, and either the small tube ran round this when it was rolled up or if the small tube was only the length of the script itself, then this stick, which protruded, was the means by which the small tube was turned. This small stick could have had a turned head, which may have been painted, which would be why the poet says: pictis luxurieris umbilicis.68 To this small stick, if indeed there was such a one, it seems that a note that is seen hanging on scrolls in paintings was attached in order to indicate the title of the book. This name of the said small tube taken from that of the navel could later have been used to refer to the ornament on the binding or cover of rectangular books, as Martorelli concludes from a passage in Lucian\'92s Adversus Indoctum. This ornament was either a fitting, as on our oldest books, or a stamp, as the so-called horn volumes have.\
With some of these scripts a procedure was adopted, as one of the ancients did with Lycophron,69 whose mysterious poem he cut in two, to see whether more could be seen on the inside than on the outside, and as Saint Jerome is said to have done with the same intention to Persius. Some large rolls were cut through in the middle, to see the curved part on the inside and to show it to strangers. In some of them the script is as beautiful and large as in the Oxford Pindar.\
The more these scripts resemble pieces of coal and the more they have the same blackness throughout, the more they are to be considered better preserved, and the easier it is to unroll them. This can be understood from the nature of coal. For wood, which has become coal by virtue of the separation and removal of moisture and after the evaporation of foreign material, is not subject to any further change and acquires a\
permanent state, so that border markers and milestones can be made with coal as permanent reminders. The same is the case with these scripts. The more quickly and evenly they were penetrated by the fiery material from Vesuvius, by which all moisture was removed from them, the more the material of the papyrus acquired a steady uniform state, and just like the simple firm elements of things became immutable and could not decompose. But those scripts on which the fiery material did not have a uniform effect do not have an even color, and as the moisture was not driven out of them immediately as with the others, they were subject to change, and moisture outside them tended to combine with that inside them, and drew ashes and earth in with it. By this the parts that were affected in this way suffered damage and were corroded. The former ones are therefore much easier to unroll than the latter ones.\
The condition of these scripts has caused the frequently mentioned Martorelli to express a very strange and paradoxical opinion, which is an obvious testimony to the blindness and obstinacy of human beings. This learned man asserts, against the palpable visual evidence, that the Herculanean scripts, which he had seen as frequently as he wanted to, were not scholarly treatises, and definitely not books, but only documents, endowments, contracts, resignations, and such things, and that therefore the place where they had been found had been the archive of the city of Herculaneum. In the first place he denies that scrolls were in common use among the ancient Greeks, and he attributes to them only rectangular books. For, he says, it is stupid to think that the clever ancients would have chosen such an inconvenient form of books as rolled up ones must have seemed to them, for a rectangular book is much more convenient. The main reason he gives is that in their heyday the Greeks did not possess the word meaning scroll (volumen), for dXi|pa was brought into use by later Greeks to make up for this lack. Among the Greek writers, he continues, the special parts of it must have been mentioned if they had rolled up their scripts, but this is not the case. The word signifying the small tube around which the scripts were rolled (aoxpa^ioKog) he rejects as a word from Barbarian times. And so he concludes that because the Greeks in their heyday, with the great wealth of their language, lacked the word volumen, they could not have had any scrolls. He assumes this as being indisputably proven and asserts that the ancient writers spoke as he imagined them to have done. He boldly corrects those passages that contradict his opinion and declares them to have been falsified. When Aeschines talks in his fourth letter of the statue of Pindar, which the Athenians erected to him, as having a rolled script in his hand, he replaces the word \'93rolled\'94 with \'93opened\'94: instead of avedaypevov he put avecpypevov. I do not consider, he says, Diogenes Laertius, who clearly refers to the writings of Epicurus as cylinders (KU^iv5pong). He considers this word to be an addition by a Roman, because he could not find it\
in any other writer with this meaning, and not often even in Diogenes, and he defends himself here with some statements by Menage,70 who declares in his comments on this writer that he is full of additions and vulgar expressions, something that Salmasius had already noticed. But if one accepts, he continues, that the word cylinder is not an addition, then this provides no proof against what he says nor concerning the more ancient times of the Greeks, because Diogenes lived under Constantine, when perhaps scrolls had come into use by the Greeks. Furthermore, he refers to more than one rectangular book in Herculanean paintings, and where scrolls are depicted in them, he interprets them according to his belief. He accuses Spon of being a liar when in his account of his travels he talks of a liturgy of Saint Chrysostomus in scroll form that he had seen in Corinth.\
As an explanation, and at the same time to serve instead of a refutation of these opinions, which goes against the general current of thinking, I have provided at the beginning of this open letter a fine, beautiful, ancient work, which I have had copied from a masterly drawing from the school of Raphael. It can be found among the drawings of Cardinal Alessandro Albani, for the work is no longer to be found in Rome. It depicts an image of the education and teaching of youth: the oldest son of a mother, who is seated, is holding a rectangular book, which is also held by his teacher (this is for the sake of Martorelli). The youngest child is still being cared for by the hands of an old woman nurse, who is trying to raise it up toward a terrestrial or celestial globe, at which two muses are pointing their fingers. One is Urania and the other is presumably Clio, the muse of history, who has a scroll (contradicting our scholar). The third is the tragic muse Melpomene. This work reminds me of the three muses that worldly wise man had in his lecture hall. Making the same point is the stone, an image of which I have placed on the title page, on which Eros at his studies is depicted, also with a scroll, which cannot be a contract or a resignation, and a muse, who here plays the role of teacher, holding a rectangular book. Above there is a sphere. The beetle can refer either to those carved stones of the ancients that had a beetle carved in relief on one side and are therefore known as scarabs, or it was the coat of arms of the owner of this stone. In the museum of the Collegium Romanum there is a small figure in metal, half a palm in size, of a philosopher, with a beard, on his magister\'92s chair. At his feet there stands a round container with scrolls in it, and in his hand he is holding a half-unrolled scroll. This cannot be a Roman person of authority, as is shown by the beard, which was no longer fashionable when this was made. Consequently, the scripts cannot be any kind of judicial dismissals or such things. And the chair also has a different shape from the chairs of people in authority in Rome.\
What is more, our scholar contradicts all those who in the law book of Ulpianus71 (52. D.de leg. 3) understand teretes libros to mean scrolls, and codices to mean rectangular books. The men in question are\
Salmasius, Schulting,72 Trotz,73 Heineccius74 and Mazocchi. Schulting and Heineccius he just deletes in his supplements. What huge works the writings of Cicero, Livy, Seneca, and Pliny would have been, if you were to imagine them as being rolled up and having been written on one side of a sheet. He attempts to demonstrate that the word codex was used only of public documents, and when the figures of emperors on coins or as statues hold a scroll in their hands, then it must represent such a thing and not some learned writing or history. Consequently, he says, it also shows great ignorance among the ancient artists and sculptors when they place a scroll in the hands of figures representing poets and philosophers. Apollonius of Priene, the artist of the Deification of Homer in the Palace of Colonna, was also, in his opinion, badly informed when he placed a scroll in the hand of the poet\'92s father.\
But in order to show the reliability of his carefully considered opinion, he repeats in his supplements that he had looked at and studied the signature on the first Herculanean script to be unraveled. It said \'93\'aei^o5ruiou 7iepi MouoiKT|g\'94 (On music by Philodemus). Nevertheless he asserts (and will it appear incredible to my readers?) that the script in question is a public document that was instrumental in a dispute. Perhaps what he had in mind was that this dispute concerned church music and the music for weddings, or it was one decided between the local community and the town musicians. And how does he attempt to prove this yet again? He says it is because I have seen only the signature on this rolled up script and not what was written on it. For everyone knows, he continues, that trial documents are signed at the bottom. But treatises have the title and the inscription at the top. S. Martorelli should nevertheless have known, as he is well acquainted with the person who unraveled these scripts, that the beginning or the outer layer of the scripts that have been unraveled so far is missing, as I have already indicated above.\
On this occasion he also attempts to argue in another place that the most ancient Greeks did not write on small wooden boards. And in relation to this he examines two lines by Homer, in which the poet says that Bellerophon was sent with such inscribed small boards, instead of a letter, by his father to the King of Lycia, the content of which was that latter should murder the bearer:\
nsjjjrs 5s giv Ao)kit|v5e, 7ropev 5\'92 oye aijpaxa Auypa Tpa\\|/ag sv 7nvaKi 7ttdktcq OuupcpOopa noXXa.\
Sed misit ipsum in Lyciam, deditque is letteras perniciosas,\
Scriptis in tabella complicate animae\'97exitialibus multis.\
(II. v. 168)75\
Here he takes the liberty of declaring the second line to have been improperly added, and what is more that if it is left out no harm would\
be done to the poet\'92s meaning, for Xvjpa and $in)|i(p$6pa noXXa76 he says, mean the same thing, and are a tautology, and 7iiva^ utvktoc;77 gives one a false idea, as a wooden board cannot be folded. He defends himself by reference to Burmann, who, by examining certain manuscripts, has declared various lines of Virgil to be false. He does the same thing with various other passages of Homer: one of them is where it is said of Paris that he deserves to be stoned. And his reason for doing it is that Dion Chrysostomos78 (in his 11th speech, 7iepi xou \'92Tdou pf| aM>vai79), where he cites the whole speech of Hector against Paris, leaves out the two lines in question. In the Odyssey book 11 he wants to have ten whole lines, from 310 to 320, deleted without mercy, because they do seem to him to be worthy of the poet. In the following book, 12, the lines that come after the sixty-eighth, containing a story of the ship called the Argo, seem suspicious to him, because Hesiod makes no reference to this ship. And from this he concludes that this tale is more recent than both those poets. He also cannot tolerate two lines in the last book of the Iliad, 29 and 30, in which the judgment of Paris is announced.\
Then he returns in his supplements to the first passage in Homer, and demonstrates from many passages of the poet that ypacpeiv and 87iiypdcpav80 were never used by the poet to refer to writing, but only to making an incision, stabbing, and wounding. Consequently the small board Bellepheron had to deliver was, according to him, not written but had symbols incised on it that were unfamiliar to the bearer but that were understood by both the kings, who were friends. He dares to assert that therefore writing on small boards was not customary among the ancient Greeks but was so among the Persians. And here he corrects, and I have to admit that he is not without success, a passage in Aelianus,81 where the latter talks of the activities of the Persian kings on their journeys. As it was previously read and understood, it was disrespectful towards these kings. For the writer says that these gentlemen had nothing else to occupy them when traveling but carving on a small limewood board with a little knife, to ward off boredom, and they were not able to read anything serious nor have any worthwhile thoughts. I have to admit, since we have not had enough time while reading the ancients to examine thoroughly the things we find objectionable, especially when they do not suit our intentions, that this passage, where I could find no mistake in the text, gave me much to think about, as it makes one necessarily think in a completely different way about many Persian kings whose history is known to us. Through a small alteration to the last words of the passage and by the addition of a single word, S. Martorelli lends it a completely different and more dignified meaning. He reads it as f\\ d yevvaiov xi Kai ^oyou a^iov PoiAet>r|xai, ypa\\|/r|\'97that is to say that the kings of Persia did not carry any books with them, but they made their own small boards, so that they could read out some of\
their own serious (I understand it to mean \'93other\'94) thoughts, or have something especially selected or remarkable to think about.\
In the supplements he also admits that wax tablets were common for writing among the Romans and the Greeks in later times under the emperors, because he had found a passage in the acts of the Council of Nicaena which could have been mentioned in objection to his views. In the work itself, however, he noted this way of writing from the most ancient Roman times, and cites from Livy the alliance between the Romans and the Albanians, at the time of the Horatii and the Curatii, which was also recorded on wax tablets.\
Most of the offences of this scholar and primarily the mistreatment of the poet\'92s father were based on the desire to say something new and unexpected. At the same time the lack of something to write about, which is great in some countries and in some classes of knowledge, has also led him astray to such offences. And as one has to write something (which has become more necessary in Germany and on that side of the Alps to gain respect than in Italy), one often throws oneself in despair into empty speculative fancies, or one tries, as Herostratus did, to find immortality in the monuments of the ancients. The learned Ruhnken82 is one of these, with his improvements of Callimachus and other ancient poets. But I could become guilty here of an inappropriate indulgence, which can be justified to some extent in an open letter. For this reason I shall guide us back to the shore.\
One of the most useful reflections concerning the Herculanean scripts is, thirdly, the actual way of writing in them. This should be examined first in relation to its form and then afterward briefly in relation to its subject matter.\
Here I must say in advance that S. Martorelli, who is at the site itself, and could have had the best reports about it, contradicts the truth when he claims that, apart from the Greek and Latin scripts, there are other texts in an unknown script, and, as he says in the register, perhaps even in the Sabine language. This is wrong. Those that have been unrolled and others that I have seen and examined are all Greek. The learned Mazocchi himself believed he had found an Oscian script in a scroll, with which a ridiculous experiment was conducted, as I shall explain in the last section. For just as one easily believes in what one wishes for, so this man spun out in his brain a web of Pelasgian and strange word derivations, trying to construe what had become unrecognizable as being in the Oscan language. The Oscians were the oldest people in Campagna. Further, the reader should be informed that all Herculanean scripts are written on only one side. There is not a single word that is 07iioOoypdcpog, \'93written on the other side,\'94 which presumably would not happen on a simple paper like the present one. The writing is also on the inner side of the scrolls, and it is this that makes it difficult to identify what kind of script it is, before\
beginning to unroll it. A script that was on both sides must therefore have been on double or lined papyrus.\
All these scripts are written in columns. Each of these is about a full four fingers wide, in fact as much space as is required for a Greek line of verse containing three feet, and a column contains forty lines in some scripts and forty-four in others. The space between the columns is the width of one finger, and it seems that they have red-lined borders, as is the case in the first printed books. For the lines around it are whitish, which is an effect of the fire, in which there must have been some red lead or vermilion. But there is no trace here of lines that have been scratched onto it, as with parchment, in order to ensure straight writing. And perhaps, as the simple form of papyrus seems to have been transparent, a lined sheet laid under it was used.\
Up till now only four scrolls have been completely unrolled, and strangely enough it turns out that all four are by one and the same author. His name is Philodemus and he was from Gadara in Syria and was a member of the Epicurean sect. Cicero, who lived at the same time, and Horace mention him. As is well known, the first scroll is a treatise against music, in which the author wishes to show that it is harmful to both morals and the state. The second one to be unrolled was the second book of rhetoric by him, and, as I have been assured by someone who was able to study this scroll bit by bit as it was unrolled, it was Philodemus\'92s primary intention to show the influence eloquence has on the administration of the state. He is said to cite in it the political writings of Epicurus and Hermarchus. The third script that was selected for unrolling was the first book of rhetoric referred to, and the fourth script deals with virtues and vices.\
The first script has forty columns and is thirteen palms long; the second has seventy columns; the third must be about twelve palms long, and the fourth, thirty palms. This is only a rough estimate, because it is not easy to study these unrolled scripts at one\'92s leisure. Only the first one is hung up in a cabinet of the museum, where it is has been cut up into five pieces, each one containing eight columns, glued onto paper and fixed in a frame.\
I have said above that the outer sheet and perhaps even more have been lost, and consequently also the inscription together with them. If the latter had not been repeated at the end of the scripts, then the actual content and the author would have remained unknown to us. But each one of the scripts has its title and the author at the end of it, and the one concerning virtues and vices has it twice, the one following the other in both smaller and larger script. At the end of the first script is the following:\
tflXOA-HALOy II \'80 T I XOyCIKHC83\
And under the second text on Rhetoric:\
\'bbuoXHAoy\
neri PHTOPIKHC\
B.84\
The \'93B\'94 signifies the second book. At the end of the fourth are the words:\
tAOiHXoy nei'I KJ.KIWNKMTWN ^Ni.KElAteNaNAPETilN85\
Five years ago, after someone had already handled it, I found in the third script a script by Metrodorus86 with letters added in a line as follows:\
M-ETPoxwporeN -ran iu\'92otwi nepi rpA^otAT^N87\
The letters are all in block capitals, and the words are not separated from each other by either stops or commas, and a break in a word at the end of a line is not indicated. And what is more, there is no question mark or other signs to help one with expression or indicate when the voice is to be raised. The usual distinguishing marks were employed more frequendy as knowledge about the Greek language declined. But above some words there can be found some symbols that have been unknown to us up till now, about which I will talk later. Concerning the size, I can compare the letters of the scripts referred to with those in the rare editions of some Greek writers by Laskaris. And those who have the opportunity of seeing the famous oldest manuscript of the seventy translators in the Vatican Library can have an even clearer conception of the form and size of those letters. Those in the script on virtues and vices are larger. But at that time cursive script was already in use, as the line from Euripides cited below shows.\
The form of the letters is different from the concept of writing at that time, for the letters with projecting lines, such as the A, have been placed at a later time by those who have examined the style of writing of the ancient Greeks, and Baudelot88 states boldly that without exception Greek letters formed in that way belong to a later period. This way of expressing it is well-known, and by this he means the last period of the Roman emperors. All the ancient tables of the various periods of Greek letters that have come to light up till now are defective, and this can be shown especially from coins. Omega, for example, which is written to as a capital letter, is placed by Montfaucon89 at the time of Domitian, but it can be found already a few hundred years before that on coins of the Syrian kings, and in the cursive form it is in the inscription on the rim of the great metal vase in Campidoglio that Mithridates Eupator, the famous last king of his line in Pontos, had given as a gift to the gymnasium founded by him. But the inaccuracy of this kind of time calculation\
can tempt one into very erroneous ideas, as would be the case with the marvelously beautiful torso of Hercules in the Belvedere, or the so-called Torso by Michelangelo, if one took the trouble to consider the age of it and tried to determine it from the inscription of the name of the artist on it. It is written as AIIoAAcoNIoZ. If the form of Omega, co, had come into use as late as was believed, then this statue would have been made in a period when it would have been difficult to produce such a work, and our conception of the art of that time would very incorrect. The special form can be seen in the case of certain letters, A, X, \'80, \'a3, X, At, p> &; sigma is always round. These letters referred to are more common in Greek inscriptions of the second century of the emperors than before that period, and sometimes a line sticks out in the opposite direction, as in the example of an earthenware lamp ^iokxht.\
There are no abbreviations or shortened words here at all, as there are none in all other Greek manuscripts using capital letters, just as the oldest manuscripts in cursive writing on parchment have few or none at all; the frequent use of shortened forms is indicative of later periods, and especially in Greek manuscripts of the thirteenth century they have unattractive features. Some shortened forms contribute, however, to the beautiful form of Greek cursive writing and lend it a roimdness, a charm, and a quality of connectedness.\
Above some letters there are points and angled strokes, which we call accents. In the same way, in the second book on rhetoric, one can see small words set above other words and in a smaller script. In the following two lines on the tenth page of this script both can be seen:\
tIMOYTOIS\
H0\'80IACnoXAHCOyKOyN Anno\'97\
--T6THT6PTOPIKHI KAI XyN\\M.EI\
I have not the slightest idea what the three points over Kal mean. But OYKOYN obviously has an accent over it. The oldest Greek inscription that has accents is probably from a later time. We know, however, that they were in use in earlier times, as even the Samnites marked certain syllables with them. Among the Greeks the invention of them was ascribed to Aristophanes of Byzantium, who lived about two hundred years before Christ. A line from Euripides, dig ev cocpov Poueupa rag Tio/j.ug ystpac vuca,90 which was on the wall of a corner house of a street in Herculaneum leading to the theater, also has accents, as they are placed here in their usual form. Among the Romans it was also common to use accents during the highest period of their development; inscriptions from Augustus to Nero can be distinguished by them, and for this reason alone I consider the following inscription found recendy in Rome, which bears no indication of its age, to be from this period:\
CELER. PRIME AVG. LIB. LIBERTVS.\
ET. GEMINIAE. SYNTYCHE. CON IVGI. ET. FLAVIO CELERIONE. ET. HE LENE. CELERINAE. FILIIS. POSTERIS QVE. SVIS. FECIT91\
So a scholar who asserts that the ancient scripts were all without accents had not seen many. The word written above another together with certain letters that are placed above others in the two lines mentioned are worth noting. I do not want to get involved in explaining them. It can easily be seen that they are alterations and corrections, such as the \'93H\'94 over the \'93T\'94 that has been left out of PTOPIKHI. Some wish to conclude from these alterations that this second book on rhetoric is the draft made by Philodemus in his own hand, which is not very improbable, and this would lead one to surmise that the country house in which these scripts were found perhaps actually belonged to this philosopher. But this would lead one to fear that one had uncovered only writings by Philodemus, as mere chance and not choice had produced the first four works by his pen.\
So much for the formal aspects of writing. The materials for it consist of ink and pens. The inks of the ancients were not as fluid as ours, and not made with ferrous sulphate. This can be judged in the first place from the color of the letters, which are even blacker than the scripts that have also become charred, so that the reading of them has been made much easier by this. For if the ink contained ferrous sulphate, then it would have changed its color, especially through fire, and have become yellow, like the inks in all the ancient manuscripts on parchment. What is more, such an ink would have eaten away at the delicate surfaces of the papyrus, as it has done in manuscripts made on skins. For in the oldest texts by Virgil and Terence in the Vatican Library the letters are engraved deep into the parchment, and some have holes worn into them by the caustic sharpness of the ferrous sulphate.\
That the ink of the Herculanean scripts is not fluid is shown by the fact that the letters are raised up, which is revealed by holding a sheet horizontally and looking at it against the light. They are all raised up from the paper. From this it follows that the ink was more like the Chinese kind than our own, and was a kind of paint. Light is thrown on this by a passage in Demosthenes, in which he reproaches Aeschines for having allowed himself to be used because of his poverty when young, to clean out the school, wash the benches there with a sponge, and grate the material to make ink: to ps^av xpipcov. So the ink was prepared like paint, and cannot therefore have been fluid. This fact is shown by the ink that was found in an inkwell excavated in Herculaneum, which is like thick oil and could still be used for writing nowadays.\
One scholar in Naples surmised that the ink used by the ancients was perhaps the black liquid of the well-known fish, the cuttlefish, which creature is therefore known as calamaro. This juice was called by the Greeks o^og, and Hesychios92 explains it as ps^av xfjg or|7iiag, \'93cuttlefish black,\'94 which serves the fish as a defense against other larger fish that pursue it. When that happens it emits the juice from its bladder, making the water cloudy and black and prevents the other fish from seeing. Just as a fox, when dogs are pursuing it, releases urine, which confuses the dogs and makes them lose the trail by its strong smell, and gives the fox the chance to get away. But there is no report about the use of this juice for writing.\
The tool used for writing was a so-called pen made of wood or cane and cut like our quill pens, with a rather long tip that was not hollowed out. A pen of this kind that seems to be made of boxwood has been preserved, but it is petrified, and another one can be seen leaning against an inkwell in a painting. From the parts drawn on it this seems to be made of cane. There is another pen held by a female figure made of terracotta, and here and on a carved stone in the Stoss Museum it can be seen that the ancients held their pens just as we do. The tip must have been quite sharp, for the letters are finely drawn, but as the pen was not cleft, it could not have been possible to give the letters so much light and shade as can be done with our pens. The strokes do not differ very much in strength or thickness.\
To this third section must be added the palimpsests, or boards covered with wax, on which they wrote down the first draft of their ideas, so that they could quickly be erased on the wax and changed. And this was done by an instrument that is wedge-shaped and has a sharp edge. It can be seen in the museum in its actual form and also in a painting. Among the royal antiquities in Dresden there are what are claimed to be such wax boards of a considerable size, hung together with straps, on which a few strokes are indicated. Where they are from and how they got there I do not know. But even before my journey to Italy I held them to be what they really are, which is crudely deceptive fakes, as those must be which are said to be in the school library in Thorn in the Polish part of Prussia, which I read about formerly in, I think, amongst other places, HeumamTs Conspectus reipublicae lietemriae. . ,93 In the Herculanean excavations genuine boards of that kind have been found that have around them an edge of strong silvery metal. The wood, however, has been burnt to coal. Last winter they were still lying in the store room of the museum. These items were found after S. Martorelli had already ended his work. For these would have converted him to the belief that these wax boards were in use much earlier than in the later periods of the Greeks and Romans, as he asserts in the supplements to his work, as already mentioned. But as, contrary to the visual evidence, he wants to appear to be a skeptic, which none of the old school has done, he will not let himself be convinced.\
Fourth and last, concerning the unrolling of these ancient scripts, various attempts were made at the beginning to achieve this. Indeed even later, when they had worked at it for a considerable time in the way I shall presently describe, it was believed that it was possible to find a swifter way, and what occurred to them was as follows. S. Mazocchi placed a large scroll under a glass bell-jar, in the belief that he could by the use of heat draw out the moisture, which had probably been retained in it, and through this the sheets would separate by themselves. But this attempt was unsuccessful, for the heat of the sun drew out the moisture but at the same time also the ink, and the script became in part blurred and in part completely imperceptible. And it was these letters that were considered to be Oscian script.\
Finally a suggestion proposed by the Court of Rome was found to be good and sound, and it was arranged for the inventor to come from Rome to Portici and be given a monthly salary of thirty Neapolitan ducats together with free accommodation and provision of the necessary household equipment. This man is Pater Antonio Piaggio, a Genoese, belonging to the Piarum Scholarum order, a man of great talent, who held the post of scrittore latino and custodian of the miniature paintings in the Vatican Library, with the usual salary for scrittori of fifteen scudi a month. He was put in charge of the paintings because of his skill at drawing and in this type of painting. And no one has managed to do better than him in the imitation of all kinds of scripts. In the Vatican a sheet is displayed with various scripts in all kinds of languages in his hand, among which the first page is a Turkish prayer book, which cannot be distinguished from the extremely small and decoratively written original there. A sheet of this kind of writing by him can be seen in the Queen\'92s Room in the castle at Portici. So it was this man who took over the conscientious, irksome, and lengthy work, which he is still doing, together with an assistant, who receives six ducats a month, and each of them works on a special scroll.\
The wooden frame used for this work resembles at some distance and at first glance a bookbinder\'92s press, in which a book is mounted with its strap to be stitched together. It rests on one foot with a drilled out screw winding round it, in such a way that the former can be conveniently twisted down onto the latter as required. On this screw frame lies a long movable board, on each short side of which there rise two round rods with screws around them, to enable an upper board to be turned up and down by means of them. In the lower board there are two steel bars fitted vertically with a screw at the length of the scripts. This means they are separated from each other by almost one palm, and are at the same height. On top of each of them is a movable steel plate in the shape of a half moon, and in the hollow of this is placed the script. These plates are wound round with cotton for greater safety. The rods can be screwed higher and lower under the board. Also, the script is suspended by two\
tapes that are the width of a small finger. Each of these are fixed to two pegs, like those on a violin, on the upper board, through various long open incisions in it, and by means of the pegs they can be tightened and loosened. In this way the script that is hanging on them can be gently twisted and turned in all directions without being touched. There are other smaller pegs on the rods between the incisions on this upper board, to turn silk threads, the use of which I shall explain immediately.\
When a scroll is hung on it to be unrolled, and the outer end has been found, then one starts to spread a small patch the size of a pea with a special glue using a soft brush, and this has the effect of making it come loose and separating it but also of sticking it together. At the same time, on the coated patches of the unwritten outer side of the papyrus a piece of thin bladder, or several small pieces, the same size as the coated spot is stuck (for this side is empty, as has been mentioned above, and the writing is on the inside). This is helpful in pulling the coated papyrus away from the next sheet, as far as it is coated. These bladders are from pigs or also from sheep, and are generally used by gold-beaters. Here, however thin they may be, they are made even thinner and pulled apart to serve as lining for the papyrus, and then they are cut up into very small pieces before use. One continues in this way, coating and lining, and when this has been done till it is the width of a small finger, according to the length of the whole script, then in various places silk threads are stuck with the same glue on the lined side. And by means of the pegs they are very slowly and gently pulled one after the other. In this way the lined strip of papyrus is completely loosened from the roll and suspended by the threads. These threads hold the released papyrus constantly in a vertical position, and when finally so much has been loosened from the scroll that it is necessary to give it more support than can be provided by threads, then the loosened material is drawn through one of the long incisions in the upper board, and gradually, as the work increases, it is wrapped around a round movable rod or cylinder, which is on the top part of the frame, on layers of cotton, so that when the script is completely unrolled, it lies around this cylinder. The silk threads continue to be necessary all the time, for they serve constantly to help keep the recently lined part separate from the next sheet. After this the script is carefully unwound from the cylinder, spread out and copied down. In four or five hours of work the scroll can be lined and loosened at the most to the width of one finger, and for the width of one span a whole month would be needed. This is briefly the whole sequence of the procedure, and as much as can be demonstrated without an illustration of the equipment.\
Next, some clear understanding of the difficulties in this work must be provided. These are due not to the nature of the papyrus but to its present condition. In many places it looks, when held against the light, like a torn rag, and this comes from the moisture, primarily caused by\
the floods that swept over the city at the same time as it was covered by ashes. This water has penetrated the scripts and has been retained in many and made the sheets crumbly and corroded with time. This damage is not obvious before they are unrolled, for otherwise one could select scripts that have suffered less. The sheets are so thin that where there is a gap in one of them, the following one lying beneath it seems to constitute together with it just one sheet and fills out the gap as it were. Thus it happens that, when the glue is brushed on, that much of the sheet lying below where the gap is (as this is rarely visible), and which was covered by the glue, is torn away and pulled into the gap of the sheet above. Thus unavoidable confusion ensues and the lower sheet acquires a gap or hole where it had probably been whole. The work on the joints of the pieces of papyrus that have been stuck together is just as dangerous, for if this joint is loosened by the application of the glue, it can easily happen that glue penetrates the joint onto the following sheet, and a piece of it sticks to the upper sheet on which one is working and pulls away a part of the sheet. It can be seen from this account that it is not only difficult to proceed quickly but also that one should not hope for too much. At least the use of such scripts as those mentioned, even if they are not garbled and corroded, is not very great, for we have more than one work on rhetoric by the ancients, and that by Aristotle could be more useful to us than all the others. There is no lack of books on morality, and on virtues and vices either, and in this field too the writings of the Stagirite are preferable to all the others.\
One could wish to find the works of historians, such as the lost books of Diodorus, the histories by Theopompos94 and Ephoros,95 and other writings, such as Aristotle\'92s judgments on dramatic poets, the lost tragedies of Sophocles and Euripides, the comedies of Menander and Alexis,96 Pamphilos\'92s work on symmetry for painters, and some works on architecture. A hypochondriac and garbled complaint against music is not very welcome to us. It would therefore be preferable, instead of completing those unrolled scripts as soon as the general content of them has been seen, to unroll and examine only the beginning of many scripts, until some with a useful content have been found. Then work could be continued on these, and until they were unrolled the others could be left.\
To satisfy to some extent the great and long-held expectations of the learned world concerning these scripts, Pater Antonio Piaggi has made the suggestion of etching the unrolled script in copper with nitric acid and thus making it available, so that language experts could start working on an explanation of these scripts. As a test he etched one column of the first script himself and showed it to his superiors. But this approach did not find favor, because they preferred to reserve the work for the members of the Royal Academy, who were considered more suitable to do it. As far as I have been able to discover in the meantime, there is no further\
plan to publish them. The priest mentioned continues, although he does not understand any Greek, to make copies of what he has unrolled, and from these written copies fair copies are later made.\
I conclude this open letter with a short report about the organization of the Herculanean Museum in Portici. Because of the lack of space and the large amount of all kinds of discoveries it is so divided that the paintings are in special rooms that have nothing in common with the actual museum. This is laid out, however, in the first story of an annex to the Royal Castle, which encloses a rectangular courtyard. These rooms are all vaulted and at the beginning only four of them were occupied, together with two store rooms, Now, however, all the rooms of the first story of the building on the three sides around the courtyard have been fitted out for this purpose, making seventeen altogether.\
The entrance is on the east side and has a guard. To the left of the entrance there is the room of the royal gatekeeper, who opens a large iron grille made with a lot of ironwork, leading into the inner courtyard. Here the first thing that catches the eye is the metal horse, which is turned towards the west, and on this side, as well as on the right, stand marble statues. Between these and the left side are old well enclosures, altars, columns, and various works of terracotta, such as glireria (fieldmice cages), cornices from ordinary houses, and so on. On this left side and also over the entrance ancient inscriptions have been fixed into the wall. The two marble columns from the tomb of Herodes Atticus and Regilla with the famous inscription also lie in this courtyard, artifacts that were brought here from the Farnese Palace in Rome. But no space can be found here to erect these large columns.\
Over the entrance to the museum stand the following two lines of verse with letters of gilded metal, placed there by the learned Mazocchi:\
HERCVLEAE EXWIAS VRBIS TRAXISSE YESEVI EX FAVCIBVS VNA VIDEN REGIA VIS POTVIT97\
A witty Neapolitan said that you can tell that the author had composed this distichon on his commode, and you could imagine him there with the expression of giving birth with difficulty, as the Romans, according to Suetonius, imagined on the face of Vespasianus (nitentis). These lines also cause others to have a stomach ache, and the \'93EX\'94 blended together with the previous word sticks between the teeth. The repaired \'93VIDEN\'94 has echoes of the school cane. And the poet can also cite a few lines of Homer that end in This inscription also pleased a certain person whom one could not contradict even concerning matters he did not understand, and when it was shown to the State Secretary, the Marchese Tanucci, with this decisive judgment, he shrugged his shoulders, but composed with the same skill with which he dictated a letter, the following inscription:\
Herculae monumenta vrbis quo reddita fatis Esse Tito credas, reddita sunt Carolo98\
The entrance to the museum itself leads to a winding staircase, which is not very suitable for that place, and above it there stands another more tolerable inscription by the poet of the former one:\
CAROLVS REX VTRIVSQVE SICILIAE PI VS FELIX AVGVSTVS STVDIO ANTIQVITATUM INCENSVS QVIDQVID VETERIS GAZAE EX EFFOSSIONIBVS HERCVLANENSIBVS POMPLIANIS STABIENSIBVS CONTRAHERE TOT ANNIS IMPENDIO MAXIMO POTVIT IN HANC MVSARVM SEDEM ILLATVM SVISQVE APTE PINACOTHECIS DISPOSITVM VETVSTATIS AMATORIBVS EXPOSVIT ANNO clo Io cclviii 99\
On the staircase stand the six metal female figures referred to.\
The first room contains mainly sacrificial vessels, and in the middle are two round marble tables. On these are the two beautiful tripods together with a round metal heating vessel (focolare), for heating a room with coals or for some other use. The paintings of the Muses and the Apollo also hang there, of which there are engravings in the second volume of the Herculanean Paintings. In the second room are various vessels for different uses, and the floor there is the beautiful pavement from the Herculanean villa. In the third and fourth room the remaining small utensils are displayed, and the last room is also the place where the unrolling of the ancient scripts is being worked on. The fifth room contains metal busts, which stand around on low cabinets in the rooms, together with the cabinets of ancient scripts, and the floor in it is an ancient mosaic about thirty Roman palms in length and sixteen wide, which is also the dimensions of the room. In the sixth room stand the ancient candelabra, and in one of the vaults belonging to it, built like a kitchen, ancient cooking utensils stand and hang. In the seventh room there are marble artifacts, among other items three rectangular vessels with decorative edges and a round hollowed-out space. They were for holy water in the temples. The Hetrurian Diana also stands here. In the eighth room are the most beautiful metal statues, a Silenus, a young sleeping satyr, and a Mercury, together with four most beautiful paintings, which were found leaning against the wall in Stabia. The ninth room is laid out with large relief works in gypsum and with pieces with figures on them, which have been preserved from a mosaic. Among the first of these is a heroic figure, supporting itself on an oval shield, on the outer rim of which there hangs a hook so that the shield can be hung up, which I have never found anywhere else. An old recess with rough mosaic has been removed whole and placed in the same room. It is six palms and five inches wide.\
The other rooms have not yet been dedicated to specific things. In the tenth there are some relief works in marble with some fine work. One represents a satyr riding on an ass with a bell on its neck. Hermes in the form of a priapus stands on a rock with a horn of plenty, at which the ass is braying and raising its member. Another work found in Herculaneum, with its old cornice around it, shows a naked female figure on a chair without anything to lean against, holding a dove on her left hand and playing with it with her right hand. In front of her stands a clothed female figure, with her left hand on the Hermes of a priapus, and supporting her chin with the other. Behind the former figure stands a bearded Indian Bacchus on a round base, holding a dish in the shape of a shell, like the one into which a female figure pours ointment in the so-called Aldobrandini Wedding. Especially noteworthy is a Socrates, sitting on a cube over which a lion skin has been thrown. He is holding the hemlock juice or poison that he has been condemned to drink. Over his arm he holds a gnarled staff lying at an angle. This work is one palm and nine inches high or wide, but less in length.\
Next to the first room are two store rooms, a coin cabinet, and a collection of books needed by the custodian. The first four rooms have a view into the garden behind the castle and of the sea, which is very near, with the Pausilipo headland, the island of Capri, and the whole Gulf of Naples visible. The last rooms over the portal look onto the street.\
They have started to make plaster casts of the best statues and busts, and these, or rather the molds for them, are sent to Spain. The large statues in metal and others in marble are intended for the gallery that is being laid out in that part of the four-sided castle opposite to the most elegant side of it. Around it and intended for it there are magnificent columns made of giallo antico, and twenty of the rare and valuable verde antico or laconic, all made from one shaft, among which there are four that were in the Farnese Palace in Rome. The others have been collected from elsewhere in Rome.\
An academy has been founded by the present King of Spain, devoted to the explanation and description of all these excavated objects. Four years ago it consisted of fifteen people, among whom Canon Mazocchi is one of the most distinguished and incontestably the most learned. These members meet together once every week with the present State Secretary, the Marchese Bernardo Tanucci, from Florence, who himself is playing an important role in the preparations for this academy, as this learned minister has told me himself. For when the commentaries on the first volume were presented to him, he found them so extensive and overloaded with superfluous accumulated book knowledge that he felt it necessary to take it in hand himself and, wielding a knife, cut away everything that was unnecessary, and consolidate what was essential, and yet there is stell matter left that should be removed.\
Nobel Count, I have composed this open letter in the countryside and in one of the splendid summer houses in Castel Gandolfo of my lord and, I can say, friend, Cardinal Alessandro Albani, and consequently far removed from books. With time it can become a more extensive treatise, for I shall try to view these treasures again from time to time, and this may perhaps be possible this autumn.\
This essay, if it should appear in a foreign guise comprehensible to the gentlemen of Trevoux,100 will provide no opportunity for the reproach they made to me concerning the description of the Stoss collection of carved stones. This concerns the books unknown to them that I have cited. I would have done the same thing if I had been in Rome and in my own library. The gentlemen in question, who set themselves up as judges on all kinds of writings, cannot be capable in their situation of passing judgment on works on antiquities, especially those that have been produced in their very location itself. In writings in such a fashionable style as Mes Pensees101 there is no place for cited works, but it is unavoidable if one wishes to refer to monuments that have been mentioned elsewhere and explained and commented on, whether well or badly, and give one\'92s own opinions of them. They should rather have commented that this work, together with the learned material, was spread not by the sackfiill but sparingly by hand, and that there is material available to write a large work in folio size, if one had not imposed the rule of not saying with two words what can be said with one. As a result it is not my fault that the critical gentlemen neither have nor know the books that a specialist in antiquities must know. And it is just as little my fault that they have to admit how poorly read they are. I am also reproached for the fact that my way of writing in French has a German quality about it. I forestalled this rebuke, however, in my preface through my open confession of my lack of practice in the language. The work had to be composed in a foreign language, and for many reasons French was considered to be the most convenient. I composed it in the roughest way and had it improved by someone proficient in the language, and I made further alterations to this improved version. I am not ashamed to confess that I am not master of the full range of my own native language. And in this work I have lacked the words for many artistic and technical things that I could have expressed more easily in Italian.\
If, Noble Count, this open letter should be handed over to you while you are still traveling, then I send with it my heartfelt wishes that Eternal Providence may guide you safely in all your journeys and bring you back (together with your companion and fellow countryman), well and richly endowed with experiences, when peace has been restored to our beloved fatherland (which has also become mine by staying there and through the favors of others), where I also wish to rest my feet, and I hope I may share in the affection with which you have honored me.\
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