Often called the father of art history, a founding hero of modern archaeology, and one who ushered in the Neoclassical craze of the 18th century, Johann Joachim Winckelmann was also the prototype of the white Northern European who, cursed with being born too late (1717), pining for the lost Hellenistic age, moved to Italy to immerse himself in the beauty of the past and console himself with the youth of the present. Born into poverty in Brandenburg, scraping through university, he was then underpaid throughout his twenties as a teacher. He became a private tutor to a wealthy family and fell in love with his only pupil, Peter Lamprecht, who later lived with him. At thirty Winckelmann was appointed secretary of a library near Dresden with 40,000 volumes and assisted its owner with writing a book about the Holy Roman Empire. His study of local antiquities eventually led to his first book, Thoughts on the Imitation of Greek Works in Painting and Sculpture. That, in turn, led to stipend to visit Italy for two years, which stretched to the rest of his life. A new Catholic convert, he became librarian to two kind, older Cardinals. After their deaths, he was librarian to the rich and influential Cardinal Albani who paved the way for him to become prefect of antiquities at the Vatican when he was 45. The following year, 1764, he published his masterpiece, History of the Art of Antiquity, which begins with the Egyptians and Etruscans and for the first time differentiates among Greek, Greco-Roman, and Roman art. Immediately heralded as a monumental work, it established his reputation throughout Europe. Four years later he was invited to court in Vienna and Berlin but re-entering the north he had a panic attack and returned to Trieste. Waiting for a ship he became acquainted with Francesco Arcangeli who murdered him in his hotel bed. Arcangeli robbed him and later told police he thought Winckelmann was a nobody.
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