t have intersected with the artists' original intent, and Hegel's response to (and decoding of) such intent in respect of the Transfiguration that Danto quotes could be considered an example of such an interpretation. However, in Hickey's formulation, Hegel would have been less about the business of decoding original intent than of conforming the Transfiguration to his own master philosophical thesis about the ineluctable working of the World-Spirit in a World-Historical painting. In other words, the sensibility of the responder provides a context for arguing, against the opinion of the previous critics to whom Hegel is also responding, the aesthetic unity of the artifact, and in the process implying that Raphael himself contemplated the artifact as an instance of aesthetic unity. But for Hickey, the operative action would be the sensibility that Hegel brings with him to the Transfiguration.
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