Seite - 264 - in Der Arkadenhof der Universität Wien und die Tradition der Gelehrtenmemoria in Europa

elmann’s life. The most interesting aspect of this paper monument is, however, the fictive in- scription on the cenotaph: D.M. / IOAN.WIN- KELMANN / VIR.OPT.AMIC.KARISS / PET. DHANCARVILLE. DOLENS FECIT / ORCO PEREGRINO. D’Hancarville, the author of the volume, claims to have built this monument for his ami- cus carissimus, his dearest friend Winckelmann. What is very unusual, however, is the last line of the inscription. In Roman times, the antique for- mula orco peregrino was applied when someone died far away from his home in a foreign coun- try, when consequently the exact place and even time of his death remained unknown to his next of kin who erected a memorial for the deceased.24 This seems to be quite a fitting formulation for Winckelmann who died in Triest, far away from his native country (Germany), as well as from his elected homeland (Rome). But the orco pere- grino might also allude to the popular geograph- ical metaphor of the past as a distant country, not only used by Caylus, but also by d’Hancarville25 as well as (more implicitly) by Winckelmann in the ‘farewell scene’ of his History. Winckelmann vanished in the orco peregrino for good, and he is therefore ultimately relocated to the pays éloi- gné of the past. iii One might imagine that Winckelmann would have been pleased by such an optimistic inter- pretation of his sad death. At least ideally, his fatal transformation from a lover of the arts to a weeping girl would have been overcome through these eulogies of his contemporaries. The idea that one could change the actual identity of a person by such a ‘speech act’, by a narrative evo- cation of a new persona, was certainly no strange concept for Winckelmann. I wish to argue that it is precisely this idea that is reflected in the fare- well scene of his History of Art. As I have mentioned, at the very end of his History, Winckelmann compared himself to a weeping maiden longing for her departed lover. In the sentence before that, he likens himself to someone who, in writing the history of his native land, must touch upon the destruction that he him- self has witnessed. Contemplating the collapse of art evoked the very same feelings in Winckel- mann.26 Both times, he tellingly compares him- self to a character that was once a contemporary of what is now lost. Be it the now destroyed na- tive land, or the departed lover: both were once present in the life of the respective mourner. An- cient art, on the other hand, was ruined quite a while before Winckelmann started writing (or was even born, for that matter), and one might assume that he must have realized this obvious fact a little earlier. However, the logic of Winck- elmann’s text, one might argue, suggests that it was only due to his historiography that ancient art died. By writing the history of art as he did, Winck- elmann might have regarded himself as ultimate- ly responsible for the outcome of the story. Thus, he enacts his transformation to a weeping maid- en at the very moment he realizes what he has done by narrating the history of art beyond its set bounds. The historical distance separating him from antique splendour seems to be an immedi- ate effect of this storytelling; the past only comes hans christian hönes 264 Cette planche représente un Columbarium, ou l’interiéur d’un tombeau, où l’on voit un homme assis dans l’attitude de la tristesse au pié d’un sarcophage de pierre. (Winckelmann, Histoire de l’art (cit. n. 16), p. CXXXVI) 24 Cf. Orrells (cit. n. 21), p. 181. 25 The past, he wrote, is a foreign country, dont la distance est immense de celui que nous habitons (P.-F. d’Hancarville, Antiquités étrusques, grecques et romaines, tirées du cabinet de M. Hamilton, vol. II, Naples 1766, p. 9). 26 Winckelmann, History of the Art of Antiquity (cit. n. 20), p. 351. Open Access © 2018 by BÖHLAU VERLAG GMBH & CO.KG, WIEN KÖLN WEIMAR