Modern English translations of several of the most important essays of Winckelmann, one of the fathers of art history and archaeology and a strong influence on Goethe and Schiller and Weimar Classicism.

Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717-68) has long been recognized as one of the founders of modern art history and a major force in the development of archaeology and the study of ancient Greek architecture. He also exerted an influence on the Weimar Classicism of Goethe and Schiller, for whom his description of Greek sculpture as evoking "edle Einfalt und stille Grösse" (noble simplicity and a...