But archaeological science was already beginning to come into contact with what was a pure manifestation of Greek art. Between 1800 and 1803 Lord Elgin stripped the buildings of the Acropolis of Athens, and all the huge booty of marble was transported to London in the British Museum; in this way we get to know the trustworthy art. Between 1801 and 1802 there are the travels of Clarke, Dodwell, Gell and Leake in Greece, with architectural studies and surveys, also as regards the Mycenaean monuments of Mycenae and Tiryns. In 1811 the marbles were recovered in Aegina from the temple of Afaia, which then passed to the Glyptotheque of Monaco, and which cast very vivid light on the archaic Greek sculpture; then there are the excavations of the temple of Apollo Epicurius in Basse (1812), the studies on Sicilian temples and the excavations of Selinunte (1822-23); while the Etruscan necropolis, especially that of Vulci, from 1828 onwards gave considerable Greek ceramic material. Among the various great archaeological enterprises of the past century and the first thirty years of this century we can include the following, in addition to those just mentioned: the French scientific expedition of the Morea (1829), the English expedition to Lycia for the transport of the monuments of the Harpies and of the Nereids in the British Museum (1842), the excavations of the Russian Archaeological Commission in Crimea (begun in 1852), the expeditions of Carlo Newton to the east with the recovery of sculptures from the Mausoleum and Didimeo (1852-59), the excavations of Enrico Schliemann, which give the knowledge of the Mycenaean civilization (1871-1884), the Austrian excavations in Samothrace (1873 and 1875), the great Germanic excavations in Olympia (1875-1880),
The address inaugurated by Winckelmann and followed, as well as by Visconti, by Carlo Fea and Antonio Nibby (identification of the dying Capitoline Rooster), continued throughout the century. XIX, while another direction was affirmed, that is, that of the exegesis of figurative monuments, especially by the work of two great German scholars, Edoardo Gerhard and Otto Jahn. While this second address culminated with Carlo Robert, the other address, stylistic or formal, established itself especially with Enrico Brunn (1822-1894) and with Adolfo Furtwaengler (1853-1907). Brunn tried to fix the artistic individualities, and therefore composed the Geschichte der griechischen Künstler, I-II, Brunswick and Stuttgart, 1853 and 1859, 2nd ed. 1889, based essentially on literary sources, while he began theGriechische Kunstgeschichte, giving due importance to the monuments. Brunn was the advocate of stylistic analysis, trying to bring out the characters of the various artists and of the various types; he was happy in his identifications: thus he recognized Myron’s Marsyas, Cefisodotus’ Eirene with Pluto, the gift of Attalus. Next to Brunn, we can place C. Friederichs, who identified the Tyrannicides of Critio and Nesiote and the Doryphoros of Polykleitos.
With the Furtwaengler you have the positive address; especially in his work Meisterwerke der griechischen Plastik, Leipzig and Berlin, 1893, he applied Giovanni Morelli’s method to Greek sculpture, trying to recognize the specific artistic formulas of each sculptor. This method was pushed to exaggerated consequences by A. Kalkmann, who believed he could reconstruct the individual work of Greek sculptors with a system of minute observations. Among the major representatives of the positive direction of the Furtwaengler we include J. Lange, F. Studniczka, E. Bulle, E. Loewy. A. Della Seta, among whom, however, aesthetic considerations of great value are perceived.
The reaction to the movement, represented especially by Furtwängler, occurred at first by denying the effectiveness of his method and demonstrating the inanity of the results he had achieved, which could be demolished by critics. But alongside this negative reaction there is a positive reaction in these fields. And there are two trends here. The first, whose beginnings can be seen in R. Kekule von Stradonitz, essentially concerns the Greek originals, no longer Roman copies, for the reconstruction of the history of art; the second, represented especially by Valdemaro Deonna, aims at large summary pictures and syntheses, trying to capture the spirit of Greek art in the similarities with other arts. But today, especially in Germany, there is a prevalence of a philosophical orientation in the study of Greek art, transcendental, nebulous, an address in which one sometimes loses sight of what is the result of positive science, based on the comparison of monuments, to rise to formal interpretations, to purely subjective visions of works of art. This direction has not taken root, if not in a small part, outside of Germany; in Germany itself the ancient tendencies, that of Furtwängler and that which is based on the examination of the originals, are not entirely lost, indeed they are still strong. Thus, for example, the tendency of JD Beazley has established itself for Attic ceramics, which is directed exclusively to the comparative study of stylistic formulas of certain parts of the human body and of drapery.
This tiring and difficult reconstruction of the history of Greek art is facilitated especially by the Corpora or collections of monuments of a specific species; we mention: Brunn-Bruckmann, Denkmäler griech. und röm. Sculptur, Munich 1888 et seq.; P. Arndt and W. Amelung, Phot. Einzelaufnahmen antiker Skulpturen, 1893 et seq, A. Conze, Die attischen Grabreliefs, Berlin 1890 et seq.; R. Kekule, F. Winter, H. von Rohden, Die antiken Terrakotten, Berlin, 1880 et seq .; Corpus vasorum antiquorum, begun in 1922 with the first fasc. of the Louvre Museum due to E. Pottier.
