CHAPTER XXVI.

WINKELMANN's "History of Ancient Art" has appeared, and I cannot venture a step further before I have read it. To refine upon art from merely general ideas, may mislead us into the adoption of whimsical theories, which sooner or later we find, to our shame, are contradicted in the works of art. The ancients also well knew the ties by which painting and poetry are bound together, and it will be found that they have never drawn them more tightly than was conducive to the advantage of each. What their artists did will teach me what artists generally should do, and where such a man as Winkelmann bears the torch of history before, speculation need not hesitate to follow.

People generally dip into an important work before they commence seriously reading it. My chief curiosity was to learn the opinion of the author upon the Laocoon, not upon the art displayed in its execution, for with regard to that he has already explained himself elsewhere; but upon its antiquity. Whose side does he take? Theirs, to whom Virgil

appears to have had the group before his eyes? or theirs, who believe that the artists took the poet's description as their model?

My taste is much gratified to find that he does not even allude to the possibility of imitation having taken place either on the one side or the other. Where is the absolute necessity for it? It is not, after all, impossible that the similarities between the poetical description and the work of art, to which I have called attention above, may be accidental, and not designed; and that, so far from one having served as the model of the other, the two were not even executed after the same. Nevertheless, had he been dazzled by the brilliancy of this idea of imitation, it is plain that he would have declared himself in favour of the first supposition; for he assumes that the Laocoon is the production of an age, when art among the Greeks had reached the highest summit of perfection; i. e. the age of Alexander the Great.

over art, even at its destruction, has preserved for 'the admiration of the whole world a work of this period, as a proof of the reality of that excellence, "ascribed by history to the numberless masterpieces "that have disappeared. Laocoon, together with his

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two sons, executed by Agesander, Apollodorus(51), "and Athenodorus, of Rhodes, belongs in all proba"bility to this time; although it is impossible to "determine its age precisely, or to give, as some "have done, the exact Olympiad, in which these "artists flourished."

In a note he adds, "Pliny does not mention the "age in which Agesander and his assistants at his "work lived; but Maffei in his explanation of "ancient statues pretends to know that these artists "flourished in the 88th Olympiad; and Richardson "and others have copied this statement, in reliance "on his authority. The former has, I think, mis"taken an Athenodorus among the pupils of Polycle"tus for one of the artists in question, and, since "Polycletus flourished in the eighty-seventh, he has "placed his assumed scholar an Olympiad later: "Maffei could have had no other grounds."

He certainly could not have had any other. But why is Winkelmann satisfied with merely quoting this argument of Maffei? Does it contradict itself? Not at all! Although it were corroborated by no other evidence, it would of itself constitute a slight probability, unless there is some evidence to prove that it is impossible that Athenodorus the pupil of Polycletus, and Athenodorus the associate of Agesander, were one and the same persons. Fortunately this can be shewn, and that too by their different countries. The first Athenodorus came, according to the express testimony of Pausanias," from Clitor in Arcadia; while the second, on the authority of Pliny, was a native of Rhodes.

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Winkelmann can have had no object for wishing

Β Αθηνοδῶρος δὲ καὶ Δαμίας .

δὗτοι δὲ ̓Αρκάδες

élσi ék Kλeirópos. Phoc. cap. ix. p. 819. Edit. Kuh.

that Maffei's assertion should not be incontrovertibly disproved by the production of this circumstance. It must rather be, that the grounds, which, with his undeniable insight, he derived from the art displayed in the execution of the group, appeared to him of such importance, that it mattered little whether the opinion of Maffei still retained some probability or not. He recognises without doubt in the Laocoon too many of those "argutia" which were peculiar to Lysippus, and with which he was the first to enrich art, to conceive it possible that it should be the production of an age preceding him.

But supposing it proved that the Laocoon cannot be of greater antiquity than the age of Lysippus, does it necessarily follow that it must belong to that period, or the next, or that it is impossible it should be the work of a far later age? To pass over the time preceding the establishment of the Roman monarchy, during which art in Greece now lifted, and now drooped its head; why may not the Laocoon have been the happy fruit of that rivalry, which the lavish magnificence of the first Cæsars must have enkindled among the artists, and Agesander and his helpmates have been contemporaries of a Strongylion, an Archesilaus, a Pasiteles, a Posidonius, or a Diogenes? Were not some of the works of these masters valued as highly as any that art ever produced? Let us suppose that pieces, unquestionably theirs, were Plinius, lib. xxxiv. sect. 19. 6.

still extant, but that the antiquity of their authors was unknown, and could only be inferred from the art displayed in their execution; would not an inspiration almost divine be required to guard the critic against a belief that he ought to attribute them also to that age, which alone Winkelmann deems capable of having produced the Laocoon?

It is true that Pliny does not expressly state the time, at which the artists of the Laocoon flourished. Still, if I were to draw any inference from the connection of the whole passage, as to whether he intended to rank them among the ancient or modern artists, I confess that the probability seems to me to be in favour of the latter supposition; but let the reader judge for himself.

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After Pliny has spoken, somewhat at length, of the most ancient and greatest masters in sculpture, Phidias, Praxiteles, and Scopas; and has afterwards given, without any chronological order, the names of the rest, and especially of those, any of whose works were still extant at Rome, he continues as follows. "Nec multo plurium fama est, quorun"dam claritati in operibus eximiis obstante numero "artificum, quoniam nec unus occupat gloriam, nec "plures pariter nuncupari possunt, sicut in Laocoonte, "qui est in Titi imperatoris domo, opus omnibus et "picturæ et statuariæ artis præponendum. Ex uno "lapide eum et liberos draconumque mirabiles e Lib. xxxvi. 4. 11.