Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 February 2013
The credit for inventing the scientific study of Greco-Roman sculpture still belongs to the German scholar, Johann Joachim Winckelmann. The reason for this, the Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums or History of the Art of Antiquity, was first published in Dresden in 1764 and supplemented in 1767 by the Anmerkungen über die Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums or Further Remarks. So important was the project that Winckelmann was revising it when he was murdered a year later. This evolving version was published in Vienna in 1776. It is this amended Geschichte that formed the basis of influential French and Italian editions. These followed quickly, propelled perhaps by the interest generated by his murder. Though it was another hundred years before the text was translated into English, its impact has been extraordinary. Vestiges of the book are everywhere. Citations from the ‘final’ version permeate the literature. Even without opening it, we sense its influence on the field we call ‘Classical Art’.