ABSTRACT
Both Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and his artistic mentor, Johann Heinrich Meyer, were introduced as students to the work of Johann Joachim Winckelmann by their respective drawing masters, and Goethe's hoped-for meeting with the great art historian was only thwarted by the latter's violent death in 1768. Decoration or ornateness raises the issue of what Alexander Nagel and Christopher S. Wood call the 'total context of the built space'. The single, figurative statue is a precious movable object for which the built space's four walls act as a mere container. A short piece entitled 'Von Arabesken' that Goethe published in Wieland's Teutscher Merktir in 1789 is often cited as evidence of his lack of enthusiasm for ornament, at least by comparison with Karl Philipp Moritz. It is hardly surprising that the alternative antiquity that Goethe and Meyer saw with the help of Giulio Romano did not influence the prize competitions.
