Johann Joachim Winckelmann entered the world on the 9th of December 1717 in the town of Stendal. His father Martin worked as a cobbler while his mother Anna Maria Meyer came from a family of weavers. The boy grew up in poverty and faced hardship during his early years. He attended the Köllnisches Gymnasium in Berlin before moving to the Altstädtisches Gymnasium at Salzwedel. At age twenty-one he enrolled as a theology student at the University of Halle in 1738. Winckelmann soon realized that the teachers there could not satisfy his intellectual interests in Greek classics. He devoted himself privately to Greek studies and followed lectures by 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 he attended medical classes at Jena in 1740. He also taught languages but found work with children unsatisfying.
Librarian To Count Bünau
In 1748 Winckelmann wrote to Count Heinrich von Bünau expressing frustration over the scarcity of good books. That same year he was appointed secretary of von Bünau's library at Nöthnitz near Dresden. The collection contained some forty thousand volumes including works by Voltaire and Montesquieu. Leaving behind the spartan atmosphere of Prussia brought him great relief. His major duty involved assisting von Bünau in writing a book on the Holy Roman Empire. During this period he made several visits to the collection of antiquities at Dresden. These treasures awakened an intense interest in art which deepened through his association with painter Adam Friedrich Oeser. Oeser later became a friend and influence on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Winckelmann subsequently exercised a powerful influence over Goethe as well.The Masterwork Of Ancient Art
Winckelmann published his masterpiece Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums in 1764. This work soon became recognized as a permanent contribution to European literature. It provided a thorough chronological account of all antique art including that of Egyptians and Etruscans. The text defined organic growth maturity and decline within the art of a civilization. Winckelmann set forth both the history of Greek art and of Greece itself. He presented a glowing picture of political social and intellectual conditions fostering creative activity in ancient Greece. The fundamental idea was that beauty could be attained only when individual features were subordinated to a general scheme. True artists selected phenomena suited to their purpose and combined them through imagination. Normal proportions remained maintained while particular parts like muscles did not break harmony. This marked an epoch by indicating how study of Greek art should approach methods for solid results.