Convenient misunderstandings: Winckelmann's History of Art and the reception of meteorocultural models in Britain, Journal of Art Historiography, December 2021 (original) (raw)

One of the most controversial aspects of Johann Joachim Winckelmann's contribution to art history remains his use of climate theory to explain cultural phenomena, a motif that, for reasons explained in this essay, was particularly emphasised in eighteenth-century Britain. In the context of what has been viewed as his disfigured (and unsavoury) or, in turn, ecstatic and admiring reception in Britain, the study of meteorological evaluations of culture in Winckelmann's work hits at the soft underbelly of his influence in Britain. 1 On the one hand, climate catalysed views on Winckelmann's art historical model as a whole. On the other, the study of its reception reveals the broad range of social, professional and national interests involved in the formation of critical opinion about this specific naturalhistorical aspect of his work. These competing motivations produce a mixed and cracked picture that affected drastically understandings both of Winckelmann's meteocultural model and his art historical contribution, more broadly. While this picture is full of jarring divisions, misunderstandings and distortions, it also reveals openings and original insights -frequently by way of and not despite such biasesthat underline once more the dynamism and importance of Winckelmann's historical angle on climate. In his History of the Art of Antiquity, Winckelmann was explicit about the special place of his chapter on the influence of climate within his book's core historical concerns: he thus aimed to promote as he put it 'the discussion of art among particular peoples' and 'the reasons why art differs among the countries that practice it'. 2 Contemporaries, especially in Britain, understood the originality of 1 That admiration was sometimes seen as internally divided and ambivalent. A much later reviewer for The Times newspaper characteristically described the English praise for his work as 'of the most formal' and 'more than platonic' kind but very neglectful: 'we have praised him', he added, 'in the abstract but we have neglected to read him'; see 'Winckelmann', The Times, 8 June 1881, 5. Katherine Harloe has reviewed the British reception of Winckelmann's work from the eighteenth century to the present, correcting swift and biased evaluations of his influence in this country; see Katherine Harloe, 'Winckelmann's Reception in Great Britain' in Ortwin Dally, Maria Gazzetti and Arnold Nesselrath, eds,