This is the first intellectual biography in English of Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717-1768), one of the most famous eighteenth-century German philosophers and aestheticians who is considered by many to be the father of modern art history. Analyzing Winckelmann`s magnum opus, History of the Art of Antiquity, Potts explains the fundamental importance to art history of this eloquent account of the aesthetic and imaginative Greek ideal in art.