ABSTRACT
Athens. His fundamental idea is that the end of art is beauty, and that this involves the true artist selecting from nature those features best shaped for this purpose, and then combining them through imagination into the creation of ideal types, particularly of the human form. For Winckelmann this could only be understood through reference to the actual remains of antiquity, closely observed by himself during his travels, and it is this which gives his book a particular archaeologically-rooted strength.
