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Creator (Definite): Georg Wilhelm Friedrich HegelDate: 1835
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Quoted by Walter Pater, Studies in the History of the Rennaissance. 1873.
Description:Pater quotes from the introduction of the second (1845) edition of this work: 'Hegel, in his lectures on the Philosophy of Art, estimating the work of his predecessors, has also passed a remarkable judgment on Winckelmann's writings:—'Winckelmann, by contemplation of the ideal works of the ancients, received a sort of inspiration, through which he opened a new sense for the study of art. He is to be regarded as one of those who, in the sphere of art, have known how to initiate a new organ for the human spirit.' That it has given a new sense, that it has laid open a new organ, is the highest that can be said of any critical effort.' (86)
'The arts may thus be ranged in a series, which corresponds to a series of developments in the human mind itself... The art of Egypt, with its supreme architectural effects, is, according to Hegel's beautiful comparison, a Memnon waiting for the day, the day of the Greek spirit, the humanistic spirit, with its power of speech.' (105)
'Heiterkeit—blitheness or repose, and Allgemeinheit—generality or breadth, are, then, the supreme characteristics of the Hellenic ideal.' (106)
cited in footnote on p. 110: 'The Hermaphrodite was a favourite subject from early times...' 'Hegel, Aesthetik, Th. iii. Absch. 2, Kap. I.' (109-110)
Translation of passage by Pater: 'This sense,' says Hegel, 'for the consummate modelling of divine and human forms was pre-eminently at home in Greece. In its poets and orators, its historians and philosophers, Greece cannot be conceived from a central point, unless one brings, as a key to the understanding of it, an insight into the ideal forms of sculpture, and regards the images of statesmen and philosophers, as well as epic and dramatic heroes, from the artistic point of view; for those who act, as well as those who create and think, have, in those beautiful days of Greece, this plastic character. They are great and free, and have grown up on the soil of their own individuality, creating themselves out of themselves, and moulding themselves to what they were, and willed to be. The age of Pericles was rich in such characters; Pericles himself, Pheidias, Plato, above all Sophocles, Thucydides also, Xenophon and Socrates, each in his own order, the perfection of one remaining undiminished by that of the others. They are ideal artists of themselves, cast each in one flawless mould, works of art, which stand before us as an immortal presentment of the gods. Of this modelling also are those bodily works of art, the victors in the Olympic games; yes, and even Phryne, who, as the most beautiful of women, ascended naked out of the water, in the presence of assembled Greece.' (110)
'Even in the worship of sorrow the native blitheness of art asserted itself; the religious spirit, as Hegel says, 'smiled through its tears.'' (113)