Johann Joachim Winckelmann stars in exhibition spread across Vatican Museums

From November 9, 2018 to March 9, 2019, the Vatican Museums commemorate the 250th anniversary of the death of Johann Joachim Winckelmann (Stendal, 1717 - Trieste, 1768) with the exhibition Winckelmann. Masterpieces Disseminated in the Vatican Museums, celebrating the figure of the great Prussian art historian with an exhibition highlighting the pivotal role that the Vatican collections have played in the studies, theories and writings of the celebrated scholar. The exhibition, curated by Guido Cornini and Claudia Valeri, takes the form of a “diffuse” exhibition that is divided into a thematic itinerary aimed at presenting visitors with fifty masterpieces from the Vatican Museums reinterpreted through Winckelmann’s often brilliant insights. Each work is graphically identified thanks to an original layout and included in a didactic circuit that explains the scientific reasons for each report. Given the breadth of the topics covered, the itinerary winds its way through all of the Vatican Museums’ itineraries, with obvious preponderance in the areas of ancient sculpture (Egyptian, Greek and Roman), while also including the Renaissance and Baroque works of art that captured the German intellectual’s interests.

Excerpts from Winckelmann’s writings are included in the caption apparatus that accompanies the works selected for the exhibition: his commentaries and illustrations testify to how direct observation of artifacts and careful reading of literary sources were the foundations on which the scholar developed the theoretical foundations of modern archaeology. Thus, Room XVII of the Pinacoteca hosts some of his important literary productions kindly granted by the Vatican Apostolic Library. Also shown to the public for the first time is a document, dated July 31, 1764, which mentions a sum of money to be paid “to Mr. Gio. Winckelmann, Writer of the German Language.” Within this space, visitors will be able to watch a film that helps them better understand the atmosphere and cultural climate that characterized the city of Rome around the middle of the 18th century. Winckelmann arrived there in 1755 for a short stay and, instead, would spend the rest of his life in Italy, captivated by the grandiose beauty of the antiquities.

Winckelmann never saw the Vatican Museums as they are conceived today, yet a substantial part of the papal collections have been enriched, in the years since his death, with many of the works he observed in the Roman aristocratic collections and to which he devoted his attentions and ingenuity. The exhibition has, therefore, a twofold purpose for the Vatican Museums: to bring to the attention of the general public a figure who forever changed the study of archaeology by influencing all subsequent generations (Winckelmann wrote: “it is necessary to work for posterity, and to this I would like to leave a remarkable legacy”) and to retrace the birth of a substantial part of its collections, from that moment for the first time conceived no longer as the exclusive property of a few, but as places intended for collective cultural education.

The exhibition can be visited during the opening hours of the Vatican Museums: daily from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. (the ticket office closes at 4 p.m.). You enter with the Vatican Museums’ entrance ticket: full 17 euros, reduced 8 euros (for children and young people between 6 and 18 years old, individual priests, religious men and women, seminarians and novices, personnel employed by the Holy See or the Vatican City State), reduced for groups on pilgrimage to Rome 8 euros, reduced university students and students (age not over 25 years of age) 8 euros, reduced school groups, seminaries and religious colleges 4 euros, free on the last Sunday of the month, children under 6 years of age, directors of museums, superintendencies and entities in charge of protection, disabled people with disabilities greater than 74% (and accompanying person if the disabled person is not self-sufficient), journalists authorized by the management, Icom and Icomos members, donors, benefactors and members of the Patrons of the Vatican Museums association, professors of the chairs of Archaeology, History of Art, Architecture and Ethnology, as well as academies based in Rome, for the occasional performance (with the authorization of the management) of specialized lectures in the museum sectors relevant to their teaching area. Optional reservation costs €4 for full and reduced €8, €2 for reduced €4. Winckelmann. Masterpieces Diffused in the Vatican Museums is accompanied by a catalog published by Edizioni Musei Vaticani with texts by Barbara Jatta, Guido Cornini, Claudia Valeri, Alessandra Rodolfo, Mario Cappozzo, Maurizio Sannibale, Eleonora Ferrazza, Giandomenico Spinola, Claudia Lega and Adele Breda. For information you can visit the Vatican Museums website.

Pictured: the Laocoon group (1st century B.C.-1st century A.D.; marble, height 242 cm; Vatican City, Vatican Museums)

Johann Joachim Winckelmann stars in exhibition spread across Vatican Museums

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