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December 27, 2007
to delight and instruct
All arts have a double aim: to delight and instruct. Hence many of the greatest landscape painters have believed that they would do only partial justice to their art if they did not include human figures in their landscapes.
Let the artist’s brush, like Aristotle’s pen, be imbued with reason. He should leave our minds with more than he has shown our eyes, and he will attain this goal if he has learned to use allegory not to conceal his ideas but to clothe them. Then, whether he has a poetical object of his own choice or someone else’s, his art will inspire him and kindle in him the flame which Prometheus took from the gods. The connoisseur will have food for thought and the mere admirer of art will learn to think.
Johann Joachim Winckelmann
Posted by amin at December 27, 2007 12:57 AM