All'alba della moderna archeologia: la riflessione antiquaria sui concetti di stile e tipologia tra Sei e Settecento

Winckelmann’s Geschichte der Kunst des Althertums (1763) represents the arrival point of the antiquarian research which, from the second half of the seventeenth century onwards, became progressively independent from the analysis of iconography and embraced specifically material aspects of the artistic production. The paper traces this cultural evolution from the point of view of the study on ancient painting, that is from the pioneering research by Giovan Pietro Bellori (1615-1696) to Caylus’ most famous antiquarian works: in Recueil de peintures antiques (1757) Caylus defined “goût” as the characteristic artistic expression of each Nation in every age. Moreover, the same term is used in Recueil d’antiquités (1752-1767) to define the chrono-typological basis followed in the ordering of the evidence from material culture. Therefore, “goût” translates two fundamental categories of modern archaeology meant to be separated for a long time and then rejoined only during the twentieth century: the one referring to stylistic matters, the other relying on “typology” as a fundamental tool in the studies on material culture.