Dwa ciała Winckelmanna .......... 775

WINCKELMANN’S TWO BODIES

Johann Joachim Winckelmann, the founder of the scientific history of art and classical archaeology, was accidentally murdered in Triest in 1768. No care was taken at the time to give the body of the great humanist a proper burial, because it was placed in a mass grave. Wickelmann was commemorated throughout Europe with idealised images and engravings depicting his imaginary tombs, with impressive, antiqued forms. A real imposing tomb monument at the site of Winckelmann’s burial was built fifty years after his death, when the memory of its most embarrassing circumstances had faded. It can be said that after Wickelmann’s death, homage was paid to two his bodies: the first, which was an intellectual construct, glorious and characterised by spiritual beauty, and then the second, real, which was accepted only when it stopped evoking memories of Wickelmann’s weaknesses and his pitiful fate.