"
In this fresco it is the classical tradition, the orthodoxy of taste,
that Raphael commemorates. Winckelmann's intellectual history
authenticates the claims of this tradition in human culture. In the
countries where that tradition arose, where it still lurked about its
own artistic relics, and changes of language had not broken its
continuity, national pride might sometimes light up anew an
enthusiasm for it. Aliens might imitate that enthusiasm, and
classicism become from time to time an intellectual fashion. But
Winckelmann was not further removed by language, than by
local aspects and associations, from those vestiges of the classical
spirit; and he lived at a time when, in Germany, classical studies
were out of favour. Yet, remote in time and place, he feels after
the Hellenic world, divines those channels of ancient art, in
which its life still circulates, and, like Scyles, the half-barbarous
yet Hellenising king, in the beautiful story of Herodotus, is
irresistibly attracted by it. This testimony to the authority of the
Hellenic tradition, its fitness to satisfy some vital requirement of
the intellect, which Winckelmann contributes as a solitary man of
genius, is offered also by the general history of the mind. The
spiritual forces of the past, which have prompted and informed
the culture of a succeeding age, live, indeed, within that culture,
but with an absorbed, underground life. The Hellenic element
alone [199] has not been so absorbed, or content with this
underground life; from time to time it has started to the surface;
culture has been drawn back to its sources to be clarified and
corrected.
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