In this
fresco it is the classical tradition, the orthodoxy of taste, that
Raffaelle commemorates. Winckelmann's intellectual history authenticates
the claims of this tradition in human culture. In the countries where
that tradition arose, where it still lurked about its own artistic
relics, and changes of language had not broken its continuity, national
pride might sometimes light up anew an enthusiasm for it. Aliens might
imitate that enthusiasm, and classicism become from time to time an
intellectual fashion. But Winckelmann was not further removed by
language, than by local aspects and associations, from those vestiges of
the classical spirit; and he lived at a time when, in Germany, classical
studies were out of favour. Yet, remote in time and place, he feels after
the Hellenic world, divines the veins of ancient art, in which its life
still circulates, and, like Scyles, the half-barbarous yet Hellenising
king, in the beautiful story of Herodotus, is irresistibly attracted by
it. This testimony to the authority of the Hellenic tradition, its
fitness to satisfy some vital requirement of the intellect, which
Winckelmann contributes as a solitary man of genius, is offered also by
the general history of culture.
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