Brill’s New Pauly Supplements II - Volume 12 : The Reception of Antiquity in the Age of Enlightenment

A. IntroductionScepticism in the 18th century became emphatically pluralized. The various scepticisms and antiscepticisms of the Enlightenment and Counter-Enlightenment were functionally differentiated and often made no explicit reference to ancient Pyrrhonism or the scepticism of the Platonic Academy. The editing (E. Ancient texts, editing of) of the works of Sextus Empiricus which began in the 16th century and the uninterrupted availability of Cicero’s Academica [27] meant that the conditions had long been present for proper understanding of sceptical ende…

A. IntroductionEngagement with the languages and culture of Classical Antiquity, being an element of higher education in the 18th century, was reserved for a small segment of the population—the so-called ‘learned’ classes—and proceeded either with the help of private tutors or through attendance at an institution of secondary education.The term ‘secondary education’ covers all institutions that promised academic training preparatory to (tertiary) studies at university (e.g. Latin schools, Gymnasien, lycées). Along with religious instruction, these schools focuse…

A. IntroductionThe reception of Antiquity in sculpture in the 18th century is a multifaceted phenomenon by no means limited to stylistic alignments to ancient antecedents or the adoption of particular attitudinal motifs from ancient sculpture [17]. While such formal aspects certainly did play an important role over the course of the 18th century, the crucial factor behind the emergence of Antiquity as the paradigm of artistic production in the second half of the century was engagement with the subject matter and themes of ancient…

A. Tradition and innovationThe sepulchral art of the 18th century underwent profound changes both in religious premises and in the hygienic considerations pertaining to burial. As was generally true of all fields of art at the time, Antiquity functioned as a frame of reference from 1750 or so onwards, particularly in regard to iconographic changes to tombs. To begin with, funerary monuments of the 18th century continued to follow the typologies established in the 17th century. Besides simple epitaphs, sometimes decorated with a bust, more lavish tombs often had a sarcophagus as their…

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