perception, central to the idea of‘art’, secularizes Christian notions of the
disinterested contemplation of divine beauty and goodness. In hisHistory of
Ancient Art(1764), tracing German to ancient Greek identity through
Roman sculpture, Johann Joachim Winkelmann (1717–1768) applied this
model retroactively to Greece. Linking the amalgamation of beautiful parts
from several models to produce the ideal beauty, he cites Xenophon’s
description of dialogues between Socrates and Parrhasius, as well as Clito.
Winkelmann misinterprets the dialogue’s ethics of depiction warning
against the deceptive nature of verisimilitude. Instead, he says,“They pur-
ified their images from all personal feelings, by which the mind is diverted
from the truly beautiful.”^46
Kant’sCritique of the Power of Judgement(1790) monumentalized this
chasm between sensory evaluation and subjective experience, laying the
foundations through which modern art history would evaluate the objects
Figure 5Johann Jacob von Sandrart,Zeuxis and Parrhasius,inAcademia nobilissimae
artis pictoriae, 1683, v. 2, pl. C. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, 3011– 241
(^46) Winkelmann, 1850 : 51; Goldhill, 2010 : 173.
The Competition between Zeuxis and Parrhasius 177