transition from literature, even from the highest things that have
been expressed in word and language, from poetry and rhetoric, to the
plastic and graphic arts is difficult, indeed almost impossible. For
there lies between the two a tremendous chasm, over which only a
specially adapted nature can help us. We have now a sufficiently large
number of documents lying before us to enable us to judge how far
Winckelmann succeeded in doing this.

Through the joy of appreciation he was first attracted to the treasures
of art; but in order to use and judge them, he required artists as
intermediaries, whose more or less authoritative opinions he was able to
comprehend, revise, and express. In this manner originated his treatise
_Concerning the Imitation of Greek Masterpieces in Painting and
Sculpture_, with two appendices, published while he was still in
Dresden.

However much Winckelmann appears, even here, to be upon the right path;
however many delightful, fundamental passages these writings contain,
however correctly the final aim of art is already defined in them, they
are nevertheless, both as regards form and subject, so baroque and
curious, that one would in vain seek their meaning, unless he had
definite information concerning the personality of the connoisseurs and
judges of art at that time assembled in Saxony, and concerning their
abilities, opinions, inclinations and whims. These writings will
therefore remain a sealed book to posterity, unless well informed
connoisseurs of art, who lived nearer those times, should soon decide
either to write or cause to be written a description of the then
existing conditions, in so far as this is still possible. Lippert,
Hagedorn, Oeser, Dietrich, Heinecken and Oesterreich loved, practised
and promoted art, each in his own way. Their purposes were restricted,
their maxims were one-sided, yea, very often, freakish. They circulated
stories and anecdotes, the varied application of which was intended not
only to entertain but also to instruct society. From such elements arose
the earliest treatises of Winckelmann, which he himself very soon found
unsatisfactory, as indeed he did not conceal from his friends.

Although not sufficiently prepared, yet with some practical experience,
he at length began his journey, and reached that country where for the
receptive mind the time of real culture begins--that culture which
permeates the entire being, and finds expression in creations which