DOI issue:
Część 1: Mistrzowie dawni - Mistrzowie nowi
DOI article:Ziemba, Antoni: Mistrzowie dawni: Szkic do dziejów dziewiętnastowiecznego pojęcia
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.54671#0056
beginning with the Van Eyck brothers to Marten de Vosa, preceding the era of ‘the
famous living Netherlandish painters’.
The in-between status of ‘old modern was the topie of discourse among the aca-
demic circles, formulated by Jean de La Bruyere (1688; the principle of moving the
caesura between antiąuite and modernite), Charles Perrault (1687-1697: category of le
notre siecle preceded by le siecle passe, namely the grand masters of the Renaissance),
and Pellegrino Antonio Orlandi writing from the position of an academic studioso for
connoisseurs and collectors (Abecedario pittorico, 1704, 1719, 1733, 1753; the antichi-
moderni category as distinct from the i viventi).
Together with Christian von Mechel (1781, 1783) the new understanding of‘old
modernity’ enters the scholarly domain of museology and the devising of displays in
royal and ducal galleries opened to the public, undergoing the division into national
categories (schools) and chronological ones in history of art becoming morę a science
(hence the alte niederlandische/deutsche Meister or Schule). While planning and describ-
ing painterly schools at the Vienna Belvedere Gallery, the learned historian and expert
creates a tripartite division of history, already without any reference to antiąuity, and
with a meaningful shift in eras: Alte, Neuere, and lebende Meister, namely ‘Old Mas-
ters’ (14th-16th/17th c.), ‘New Masters’ (Late 17th c. and the first half of the 18th c.), and
contemporary ‘living artists’. The Alte Meister ceases to define ancient artists, while at
the same time the unequivocally intensifying hegemony of antiąue attitudes in col-
lecting and museology leads almost to an ardent defence of the right to collect only
‘new’ masters, namely those active recently or contemporarily. It is undertaken with
fervour by Ludwig Christian von Hagedorn in his correspondence with his brother
(1748), reflecting the Enlightenment cult of modernite, crucial for the mental culture
of pre-Revolution France, and also having impact on the German region. As much
as the new terminology became well rooted in the German-speaking regions (also
in terminology applied in auction catalogues in 1719-1800, and obviously in the 19th
century for good) and English-speaking ones (where the term ‘Old Masters’ was also
used in press in reference to the collections of the National Gallery formed in 1824),
in the French circles ofthe 18th century the traditional division into the ‘old’, namely
ancient, and ‘new’, namely modern, was maintained (e.g. Recueil d’Estampes by Pierre
Crozat), and in the early 19th century, adopted were the terms used in writings in relation
to the Academy Salon (from 1791 located at Louvre’s Salon Carre) which was the venue
for alternating displays of old and contemporary art, this justified in view of political
and nationalistic legitimization of the oeuvre of the French through the connection
with the tradition of the great masters of the past (Charles-Paul Landon, Pierre-Marie
Gault de Saint-Germain).
As for the German-speaking regions, what played a particular role in consolidating
the term: alte Meister, was the inereasing Enlightenment - Romantic Medievalism as
well as the cult of the Germanie past, and with it a revaluation of old-German painting:
altdeutsch. The revision of old-German art in Weimar and Dresden, particularly within
the Kunstfreunde circles, took place: from the category of barbarism and Gothic inepti-
tude, to the apology of the Teutonic spirit and true religiousness of the German Middle
Ages (partie. Johann Gottlob von Quandt, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe). In this respect
what actually had an impact was the traditional terminology backup formed in the
Renaissance Humanist Germanics (ethnogenetic studies in ancient Germanie peoples,
Mistrzowie
dawni...
55
famous living Netherlandish painters’.
The in-between status of ‘old modern was the topie of discourse among the aca-
demic circles, formulated by Jean de La Bruyere (1688; the principle of moving the
caesura between antiąuite and modernite), Charles Perrault (1687-1697: category of le
notre siecle preceded by le siecle passe, namely the grand masters of the Renaissance),
and Pellegrino Antonio Orlandi writing from the position of an academic studioso for
connoisseurs and collectors (Abecedario pittorico, 1704, 1719, 1733, 1753; the antichi-
moderni category as distinct from the i viventi).
Together with Christian von Mechel (1781, 1783) the new understanding of‘old
modernity’ enters the scholarly domain of museology and the devising of displays in
royal and ducal galleries opened to the public, undergoing the division into national
categories (schools) and chronological ones in history of art becoming morę a science
(hence the alte niederlandische/deutsche Meister or Schule). While planning and describ-
ing painterly schools at the Vienna Belvedere Gallery, the learned historian and expert
creates a tripartite division of history, already without any reference to antiąuity, and
with a meaningful shift in eras: Alte, Neuere, and lebende Meister, namely ‘Old Mas-
ters’ (14th-16th/17th c.), ‘New Masters’ (Late 17th c. and the first half of the 18th c.), and
contemporary ‘living artists’. The Alte Meister ceases to define ancient artists, while at
the same time the unequivocally intensifying hegemony of antiąue attitudes in col-
lecting and museology leads almost to an ardent defence of the right to collect only
‘new’ masters, namely those active recently or contemporarily. It is undertaken with
fervour by Ludwig Christian von Hagedorn in his correspondence with his brother
(1748), reflecting the Enlightenment cult of modernite, crucial for the mental culture
of pre-Revolution France, and also having impact on the German region. As much
as the new terminology became well rooted in the German-speaking regions (also
in terminology applied in auction catalogues in 1719-1800, and obviously in the 19th
century for good) and English-speaking ones (where the term ‘Old Masters’ was also
used in press in reference to the collections of the National Gallery formed in 1824),
in the French circles ofthe 18th century the traditional division into the ‘old’, namely
ancient, and ‘new’, namely modern, was maintained (e.g. Recueil d’Estampes by Pierre
Crozat), and in the early 19th century, adopted were the terms used in writings in relation
to the Academy Salon (from 1791 located at Louvre’s Salon Carre) which was the venue
for alternating displays of old and contemporary art, this justified in view of political
and nationalistic legitimization of the oeuvre of the French through the connection
with the tradition of the great masters of the past (Charles-Paul Landon, Pierre-Marie
Gault de Saint-Germain).
As for the German-speaking regions, what played a particular role in consolidating
the term: alte Meister, was the inereasing Enlightenment - Romantic Medievalism as
well as the cult of the Germanie past, and with it a revaluation of old-German painting:
altdeutsch. The revision of old-German art in Weimar and Dresden, particularly within
the Kunstfreunde circles, took place: from the category of barbarism and Gothic inepti-
tude, to the apology of the Teutonic spirit and true religiousness of the German Middle
Ages (partie. Johann Gottlob von Quandt, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe). In this respect
what actually had an impact was the traditional terminology backup formed in the
Renaissance Humanist Germanics (ethnogenetic studies in ancient Germanie peoples,
Mistrzowie
dawni...
55