Essays on the Philosophy and History of Art

by Johann Joachim Winckelmann, Curtis Bowman (Editor)

Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717-68), German classical archaeologist and art historian, is considered the founder of neoclassicism and of systematic art history. His masterpiece, Geschichte der Kunst des Altertums (1764) surveys the history of Greek Art and sets forth his theories on its fundamental aesthetic principles. This work was expanded in a second edition of 1776 and the work made Winckelmann a European celebrity. This classic text gave birth to late eighteenth-century neoclassicism, and its influence on writers and philosophers, such as Lessing, Herder and Goethe, was enormous. The only complete English version of this work is G. Henry Lodge's translation of 1880 which is reprinted here and includes a life of Winckelmann.

The majority of other essays by Winckelmann likely to be of interest to English-speaking audiences are included in the first volume reprinted here. Six of these essays were originally translated by Henry Fuseli, the Swiss critic and painter, and published in a now rare volume entitled Reflections on the Painting and Sculpture of the Greeks ... (1765). Curtis Bowman, as well as writing a new introduction that contextualizes Winckelmann's importance for the modern reader, has added two new translations of Winckelmann's art critical essays, neither of which have been fully available to English readers before.

This set will be of interest to Western art historians, German studies and aesthetics scholars by providing English-speaking readers with all of Winckelmann's most important writings on art.

1400 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

Johann Joachim Winckelmann was a German art historian and archaeologist. He was a pioneering Hellenist who first articulated the difference between Greek, Greco-Roman and Roman art. "The prophet and founding hero of modern archaeology", Winckelmann was one of the founders of scientific archaeology and first applied the categories of style on a large, systematic basis to the history of art. Many consider him the father of the discipline of art history. His would be the decisive influence on the rise of the neoclassical movement during the late 18th century. His writings influenced not only a new science of archaeology and art history but Western painting, sculpture, literature and even philosophy. Winckelmann's History of Ancient Art (1764) was one of the first books written in German to become a classic of European literature. His subsequent influence on Lessing, Herder, Goethe, Hölderlin, Heine, Nietzsche, George, and Spengler has been provocatively called "the Tyranny of Greece over Germany."