Johann Joachim Winckelmann

Born in 1717, Winckelmann was a German scholar who became the first to systematically distinguish Greek art from Greco-Roman and Roman work, separating Greek output into clear periods. His 1764 History of Ancient Art - written in German, rare for a text to achieve pan-European classic status - laid the foundation for scientific archaeology and reshaped how the West thought about beauty and antiquity. The book's reach was staggering: Lessing, Herder, Goethe, Nietzsche, Spengler all bent toward it, a pull later termed "the Tyranny of Greece over Germany". His aesthetics carried an open homoeroticism; contemporaries including Goethe recognized it, and Winckelmann himself wrote of the "lust" available in Potsdam with Frederick the Great, likening it to Athens and Sparta. In 1768, at 50, he was murdered by a fellow guest in his hotel under circumstances that were never clarified.