FROM THE DESCRIPTION - EDITION ESTABLISHED BY ELISABETH DECULTOT

Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717-1768) invented the modern description of works of art. It is from him that the spectator, freeing his subjectivity, his passions, his desires take first place in the aesthetic process. Winckelmann throws into crisis the fiction of an impassive reading of art. He scrutinizes the object, searches its details, tells its charms, reconstructs the mutilated Torso – while in return the sculpture challenges his certainties as a connoisseur and of historian. Winckelmann observes on his person the effects of this empathy: “[…] my chest seemed to expand and swell. Carried away by an emotion powerful that lifted me above myself, I adopted, to look with dignity of Apollo, a sublime port. Such ecstasies do not come without struggles interiors. The author constantly oscillates from the norm to its transgression, from the reason to vertigo, from sublimation to effusion. His impressive knowledge historical, anatomical, technical is crossed by desire-filled puffs which are similar to poems, love songs. To highlight these gaps, these tensions, these oscillations, Élisabeth Décultot has taken the side of present, translate, juxtapose and compare the various descriptions that “the father of art history" dedicated to each of the three most famous ancient sculptures: the Laocoon, the Torso and the Apollo Belvedere. A specialist in the period, Élisabeth Décultot offers us a reinterpretation radical of Winckelmann and his influence on the moderns, from Diderot to our days.