Johann Joachim Winckelmann (US: VINK-əl-mahn; German: [ˈjoːhan ˈjoːaxɪm ˈvɪŋkl̩man]; 9 December 1717 – 8 June 1768) was a German art historian and archaeologist. He was a pioneering Hellenist who first articulated the differences between Greek, Greco-Roman and Roman art. "The prophet and founding hero of modern archaeology", Winckelmann was one of the founders of scientific archaeology and first applied the categories of style on a large, systematic basis to the history of art. Many consider him the father of the discipline of art history. He was one of the first to separate Greek art into periods and time classifications.
He had a decisive influence on the rise of the Neoclassical movement during the late 18th century. His writings influenced not only a new science of archaeology and art history but Western painting, sculpture, literature and even philosophy. Winckelmann's History of Ancient Art (1764) was one of the first books written in German to become a classic of European literature. His subsequent influence on Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Johann Gottfried Herder, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Hölderlin, Heinrich Heine, Friedrich Nietzsche, Stefan George and Oswald Spengler has been provocatively called "the Tyranny of Greece over Germany".
Winckelmann was homosexual, and open homoeroticism informed his writings on aesthetics. In 1752, he mentioned the "lust" which could be experienced with the "divine monarch" (i.e. Frederick the Great) in Potsdam in a similar way as in "Athens and Sparta", and which he could enjoy so immensely that he would never again be allowed to. His homosexuality was recognized by his contemporaries, such as Goethe. In 1768, at the age of 50, he was murdered by a fellow guest at his hotel for reasons that remain unclear.
Winckelmann was born in poverty in Stendal in the Margraviate of Brandenburg. His father, Martin Winckelmann, worked as a cobbler, while his mother, Anna Maria Meyer, was the daughter of a weaver. Winckelmann's early years were full of hardship, but his academic interests pushed him forward. Later in Rome, when he had become a famous scholar, he wrote: "One gets spoiled here; but God owed me this; in my youth I suffered too much."
Winckelmann attended the Köllnisches Gymnasium in Berlin and the Altstädtisches Gymnasium at Salzwedel, and in 1738, at the age of 21, went as a student of theology to the University of Halle. However, Winckelmann was no theologian; he had become interested in Greek classics in his youth, but soon realized that the teachers in Halle could not satisfy his intellectual interests in this field. He nonetheless devoted himself privately to Greek and followed the lectures of Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten, who coined the term "aesthetics". During this period, he became an enthusiastic translator of Herodotus.
With the intention of becoming a physician, in 1740 Winckelmann attended medical classes at Jena. He also taught languages. From 1743 to 1748, he was the deputy headmaster of the gymnasium of Seehausen in the Altmark but Winckelmann felt that work with children was not his true calling. Moreover, his means were insufficient: his salary was so low that he had to rely on his students' parents for free meals. He was thus obliged to accept a tutorship near Magdeburg. Whilst working as a tutor for the powerful Lamprecht family, he fell into unrequited love with the handsome Lamprecht son. This was one of a series of such loves throughout his life. His enthusiasm for the male form excited Winckelmann's budding admiration of ancient Greek and Roman sculpture.
In 1748, Winckelmann wrote to Count Heinrich von Bünau: "[L]ittle value is set on Greek literature, to which I have devoted myself so far as I could penetrate, when good books are so scarce and expensive". In the same year, Winckelmann was appointed secretary of von Bünau's library at Nöthnitz, near Dresden. The library contained some 40,000 volumes. Winckelmann had read Homer, Herodotus, Sophocles, Xenophon, and Plato, but he found at Nöthnitz the works of such famous Enlightenment writers as Voltaire and Montesquieu. To leave behind the spartan atmosphere of Prussia came as a great relief for Winckelmann. His major duty involved assisting von Bünau in writing a book on the Holy Roman Empire and helping collect material for it; during this period he made several visits to the collection of antiquities at Dresden, but his description of its best paintings remained unfinished. The treasures there, nevertheless, awakened in Winckelmann an intense interest in art, which was deepened by his association with various artists, particularly the painter Adam Friedrich Oeser (1717–1799)—a future friend of and influence on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe—who encouraged Winckelmann in his aesthetic studies. (Winckelmann subsequently exercised a powerful influence over Goethe.)
In 1755, Winckelmann published his Gedanken über die Nachahmung der griechischen Werke in der Malerei und Bildhauerkunst ("Thoughts on the Imitation of Greek Works in Painting and Sculpture"), followed by a feigned attack on the work and a defense of its principles, ostensibly by an impartial critic. The Gedanken contains the first statement of the doctrines he afterwards developed, the ideal of "noble simplicity and quiet grandeur" (edle Einfalt und stille Größe) and the definitive assertion, "[t]he one way for us to become great, perhaps inimitable, is by imitating the ancients". The work won warm admiration not only for the ideas it contained, but for its literary style. It made Winckelmann famous, and was reprinted several times and soon translated into French. In England, Winckelmann's views stirred discussion in the 1760s and 1770s, although it was limited to artistic circles: Henry Fuseli's English translation, entitled Reflections on the Painting and Sculpture of the Greeks, was published in 1765, and reprinted with corrections in 1767.
In 1751, the papal nuncio in Saxony, Alberico Archinto, visited Nöthnitz and was highly impressed by Winckelmann. In 1754 Winckelmann converted to the Roman Catholic Church. Goethe concluded that Winckelmann was a pagan, while Gerhard Gietmann contended that Winckelmann "died a devout and sincere Catholic"; either way, his conversion ultimately opened the doors of the papal library to him. On the strength of the Gedanken über die Nachahmung der Griechischen Werke, Augustus III, king of Poland and elector of Saxony, granted him a pension of 200 thalers, so that he could continue his studies in Rome.
Winckelmann arrived in Rome in November 1755. His first task there was to describe the statues in the Cortile del Belvedere—the Apollo Belvedere, the Laocoön, the so-called Antinous, and the Belvedere Torso—which represented to him the "utmost perfection of ancient sculpture".
Originally, Winckelmann planned to stay in Italy only two years with the help of the grant from Dresden, but the outbreak of the Seven Years' War (1756–1763) changed his plans. He was named librarian to Cardinal Passionei, who was impressed by Winckelmann's beautiful Greek writing and showed him much kindness. Winckelmann also became librarian to Alberico Archinto, who had returned to Rome and become Cardinal Archinto. After the deaths of the two cardinals, Winckelmann was hired as librarian in the house of Alessandro Cardinal Albani, who was forming his magnificent collection of antiquities in the villa at Porta Salaria.
With the aid of his new friend, the painter Anton Raphael Mengs (1728–79), with whom he first lived in Rome, Winckelmann devoted himself to the study of Roman antiquities and gradually acquired an unrivalled knowledge of ancient art. Winckelmann's method of careful observation allowed him to identify Roman copies of Greek art, something that was unusual at that time—Roman culture was considered the ultimate achievement of Antiquity. His friend Mengs became the channel through which Winckelmann's ideas were realized in art and spread around Europe. ("The only way for us to become great, yes, inimitable, if it is possible, is the imitation of the Greeks", Winckelmann declared in the Gedanken. With imitation he did not mean slavish copying: "... what is imitated, if handled with reason, may assume another nature, as it were, and become one's own"). Neoclassical artists attempted to revive the spirit as well as the forms of ancient Greece and Rome. Mengs's contribution in this was considerable—he was widely regarded as the greatest living painter of his day. The French painter Jacques-Louis David met Mengs in Rome (1775–80) and was introduced through him to the artistic theories of Winckelmann. Earlier, while in Rome, Winckelmann met the Scottish architect Robert Adam, whom he influenced to become a leading proponent of neoclassicism in architecture. Winckelmann's ideals were later popularized in England through the reproductions of Josiah Wedgwood's "Etruria" factory (1782).