Introduction

The portal has two aims: (1) the digital edition of an exemplary selected art-theoretical writing (J. J. Winckelmann, Gedancken über die Nachahmung, 2nd ed, 1756), which makes the chain of textual transmission and transformation visible by linking three corpora - read sources, excerpts from these sources, printed writings by Winckelmann; (2) the development of a digital methodology for finding semantic cross-connections between a given collection of excerpts, the sources used for them and one or more works created from them.

Excerpt collections, which have hardly been recognized in the history of literature, science and archives, are to be made accessible to a broader public and generate new research with the help of the digital analysis tools developed.

In this context, the central theoretical question of what constitutes authorship and how authorship relates to concepts that are increasingly understood as their opposites in the modern era, such as reproduction, imitation or plagiarism, should be given particular focus. In particular, this edition will provide valuable impulses for a new examination of the question of which concrete processes of borrowing, appropriation and reuse of what has been read underlie the concept of intertextuality, which has been widespread in literary studies since the 1960s. Intertextuality theorists such as Julia Kristeva or Gérard Genette have never dealt with collections of excerpts and excerpting practices.

Winckelmann and excerpting

As the author of central texts on the theory and history of art in the 18th century, Winckelmann always tried to emphasize his originality over his predecessors, especially by stylizing himself as a 'connoisseur' who drew his knowledge of art not from books he had read, but by autopsy, i. e. the empirical observation of real works of art. Accordingly, he is still celebrated today as the founder of the modern sciences of art historiography and archaeology.

Aim of the digital edition

The aim of this digital edition is to take a closer look at the intertextual references that connect three corpora:

1. Winckelmann's published opus („Werk“), the Gedancken über die Nachahmung der Griechischen Wercke in der Mahlerey und Bildhauer-Kunst;
2. the handwritten 'excerpts' that he used for the work on this first publication;
3. the 'sources', i.e. the printed works that he read and based his excerpts on.

In this digital edition, the excerpts that he used for his work on the Gedancken über die Nachahmung are presented both as image digitizations of the handwritten original and as transcriptions. The sources used for these excerpts can be viewed via a link to the digital copies of the originals. Wherever the original was precisely identifiable, reference is made to the edition used by Winckelmann; where several editions are possible, the most likely one has been selected.

Specifically, the focus is on Winckelmann's Gedancken über die Nachahmung der Griechischen Wercke in der Mahlerey und Bildhauer-Kunst, which appeared in 1755 in a first edition and in 1756 in a second edition that was extended by three texts. The work immediately met with a Europe-wide response and is generally regarded as the founding document of German neoclassicism.

By linking the three corpora mentioned above using digitally generated and visualized cross-references, the long chain of textual and pictorial transmission and transformation in all its forms, from the faithful adoption (such as identified or unidentified quotations or translations) to the distant 'echo', is to be made traceable, visible and analysable. It should be noted that the cross-references between the excerpt and the published manuscript given in the portal, where they are not explicitly documented by Winckelmann himself in the form of annotations, for example, are to be regarded merely as conjectures suggested by the excerpt material.

Complete bibliography

About Winckelmann's transcribed work

The basis for the transcription of the core text of the Gedancken über die Nachahmung was the first edition of 1755. For the three additional texts of the Sendschreibens über die Gedanken, the Nachricht von einer Mumie and the Erläuterung der Gedanken also their first edition in the second, enlarged edition of the Gedanken über die Nachahmung of 1756 was used:

• Winckelmann, Johann Joachim: Gedancken über die Nachahmung der Griechischen Werke in der Mahlerey und Bildhauer-Kunst, Friedrichstadt, printed by Christian Heinrich Hagenmüller, 1755;
• [Id.]: Sendschreiben über die Gedanken von der Nachahmung der griechischen Werke in der Malerey und Bildhauerkunst, in: Id.: Gedanken über die Nachahmung der griechischen Werke in der Malerey und Bildhauerkunst, Zweyte vermehrte Auflage, Dresden und Leipzig, Im Verlag der Waltherischen Handlung, 1756, pp. 45-89;
• [Id.]: Nachricht von einer Mumie in dem Königlichen Cabinet der Alterthümer in Dreßden, in: idib. pp. 90-98;
• [Id.]: Erläuterung der Gedanken von der Nachahmung der griechischen Werke in der Malerey und Bildhauerkunst; und Beantwortung des Sendschreibens über die Gedanken, in: idib. pp. 99-172.

On the transcribed excerpts

Editorial guidelines for the excerpts

Winckelmann's excerpt texts were constituted true to the original manuscript, including deletions, corrections, additions and overwritings. In order to facilitate comparison with the digital copies of the manuscript, which have also been made available, the original flow of lines has also been adopted unaltered. By contrast, abbreviations, ligatures, abbreviations and the gemination line above "n" and "m" have been tacitly deleted.

The numbering of the excerpt pages is based on the consecutive pagination, which only emerged after Winckelmann's death in the course of the archival processing of the manuscripts when they were incorporated into the holdings of the institutions responsible for the storage of said manuscripts.

With regard to the not always easy distinction between upper and lower case letters, an attempt was made to give preference to a faithful reproduction of the original manuscript and, in cases of doubt regarding the minuscule or majuscule form of a letter, to decide according to Winckelmann's writing habits. The same applies to hyphenated and contracted spellings that are not always clearly distinguishable.

Editorial guidelines for Winckelmann's printed works

For the digital edition of Winckelmann's four Dresden writings from the years 1755-56 the line case of the original print has been retained and obvious misspellings have not been corrected. Persons, places, objects and ethnic groups mentioned by Winckelmann are marked in the text and can be activated by mouseover; in the case of works of art and literary works, links are provided to the corresponding image or text digital copies. Symbols in the margins of the text refer to intra-textual references between Winckelmann's three resp. four writings and link to excerpts on which the corresponding passages are demonstrably or most probably based.

Citation of the edition

The Winckelmann excerpts edited here should be cited according to the following pattern:

ExzW, institution (place) [BNF (Paris) or BU Historique de Médecine (Montpellier)], excerpt volume/scan number, folio number r (= recto) or v (= verso), line(s)

Examples:

ExzW, BNF (Paris), Vol. 61/9, fol. 1r, lines 1-8.

ExzW, BU Historique de Médecine (Montpellier), Vol. H356/8, fol. 1r, lines 1-5.