Johann Joachim Winckelmann, the German art historian and founder of scientific archaeology, was born at Stendal in Prussia. After early schooling in Stendal and Berlin, he studied theology and classics at Halle and mathematics and medicine at Jena. He held a series of minor positions and then became a librarian at Nöthnitz, near Dresden, where he met many artists and critics who stimulated his interest in the fine arts. Influenced by the papal nuncio in Dresden, Winckelmann became a Catholic; and in 1755, after the publication of his first important work, Gedanken über die Nachahmung der griechischen Werke in der Malerei und Bildhauerkunst (Thoughts on the imitation of Greek works in painting and sculpture; Dresden and Leipzig, 1754), he went to Rome on a royal subsidy. In Rome he was supported by various high churchmen. In 1758 he visited Naples, Herculaneum, and Pompeii and...