The Ultimate Delight

Concerning Winckelmann as a precursor of art criticism, as an ideologue of beauty, a connoisseur of Antiquity and a theorist of Neoclassicism, rivers of ink have been spilled. Few know, however, what sort of a man he was, what sort of personality he had, what tastes, what faults; few, for example, are aware that he was fond of hot chocolate and Orvieto wines, that he wooed his best friend’s wife, but that it was a man who inspired some of his finest writing. We know what he looked like through a number of portraits, some of which were done during his lifetime: portraits that remain silent unless we question them, if we have no idea of how he looked to the people who met him. Giacomo Casanova tells us that he resembled the Abbé de Voisenon, and in turn he also tells us that the Abbé was small, sickly, and vice-ridden. Should we believe him?