This is the first intellectual biography in English of Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717-1768), one of the most famous eighteenth-century German philosophers and aestheticians, considered by many to be the father of modern art history. Analysing Winckelmann's magnum opus, 'The History of the Art of Antiquity', Potts explains the fundamental importance to art history of this eloquent account of the aesthetic and imaginative Greek ideal in art. ''Flesh and the Ideal' gives us a new look at one of the more complex protagonists of the Enlightenment ... Potts deserves our thanks for bringing...

Originally published in 1764 and here translated into English for the first time, Winckelmann's work is an early systematic history of art in the ancient world.