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.