Writings on Art

by Johann Joachim Winckelmann

First edition. Johann Joachim Winckelmann 1717-68 , a German scholar and art historian, was one of the most influential figures in the Neoclassical movement. In the second half of the eighteenth and the first decades of the nineteenth century this movement dominated the European and American art. Winckelmann was the key interpreter during these times and was highly praised by Goethe, and other writers and artists. The introduction analyses his ideas and achievements. Included are large sections of his major works has been reprinted here, together with the whole of his important essay "On the Imitation of the Painting and Sculpture of the Greeks." Includes 24 illustrations, a bibliography and index. x, 166 pages. cloth, dust jacket.. large 8vo..

Genres: Art, Germany

192 pages, Hardcover

First published February 1, 1972

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."