Pausanias, voyageur et critique d’art

Pausanias as a traveller and critic. The visual writing of Pausanias can legitimately retain our attention. The descriptive rhetoric of the traveller is based on “ autopsia ”, a direct vision of works of art. Pausanias travels to see the artefact in its environment but also to store all the traces of greekness. The systematic curiosity of the traveller, interested in sacred matters and special features of the Greek landscape, completed with strong preferences, artistically speaking. Pausanias is fond of understatement, but his remarks are the proof of an experienced approach that can recognize styles and point to what should be seen. These different attitudes weave into writings necessary for understanding the cultural uses of the second century, that can be read as an Encyclopaedia or looked upon as a book of pictures. This extremely rich visual writing influenced travellers, scholars and artists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.Guilmet Céline. Pausanias, voyageur et critique d’art. In: Histoire de l'art, N°51, 2002. Voyages. pp. 39-51