ABSTRACT
The writer who did most in the eighteenth century to promote the Greek ideal of artistic beauty was Johann Joachim Winckelmann, often considered the father of modern art history and criticism. Winckelmann was born the only child of a cobbler in 1717 in Stendal, a village in Brandenburg. His parents encouraged his scholarly bent, despite poverty and the lack of a family tradition of learning. The local schoolmaster took Winckelmann under his wing, and when the teacher went blind, young Winckelmann boarded with him and read to him from the classics and other literature; to earn extra money, the boy sang in choir. When he was 18, Winckelmann went to Berlin, where he attended secondary school, his lodging arranged by his mentor. In 1737, Winckelmann enrolled in the University of Halle to study theology, the necessary course for employment in the public service. After two years, he found a position as tutor to the son of a Prussian officer, but in 1741 left to study medicine and science at the University of Jena. The next year found Winckelmann again working as a tutor, and he then spent five years as a teacher in the provincial town of Seehausen.1
