Imagination und Evidenz

The archeological and source-critical research of ancient history in the 19th century confronted its aesthetic realization with a general problem: literary and visual art imaginations cannot ignore the scientific findings yet the fragmentary evidence of the past can only be given a voice by means of aesthetic forms of organization. Whereas it is not unusual for poetic and visual art works to become storage media for archeological knowledge, the historiographical conveyance of Antiquity often feeds on the strategies of representation specific to literature and painting.