Corpus Winckel­mann

The Corpus of Ancient Monu­ments Known to Johann Joachim Winckel­mann and His Age was a project of the Winckel­mann Society, Stendal, devoted to the know­ledge of ancient art in the seven­te­enth and eigh­te­enth centu­ries as docu­mented in visual and textual sources. Parti­cular emphasis was placed on the work of Johann Joachim Winckel­mann (1717–1768) as the founder of clas­sical archaeo­logy and modern art history.

As part of this project, the Census data­base was expanded by appro­xi­m­ately 9,500 quota­tions from Winckel­mann and around 5,000 addi­tional entries for other Post­clas­sical Works from the seven­te­enth and eigh­te­enth centuries.

The ancient monu­ments discussed in Winckelmann’s publi­ca­tions, letters, and manu­script estate were presented accor­ding to their current archaeo­lo­gical assess­ment and, where they could be iden­ti­fied, illus­trated. In addi­tion, the ancient monu­ments were docu­mented through the visual and textual sources of seven­te­enth- and eigh­te­enth-century anti­qua­rian lite­ra­ture, inclu­ding nume­rous engraved works that form the history-of-scho­lar­ship back­ground to Winckelmann’s studies. In addi­tion, ancient monu­ments were docu­mented through the visual and textual sources of seven­te­enth- and eigh­te­enth-century anti­qua­rian lite­ra­ture, inclu­ding nume­rous engraved works that form the history-of-scho­lar­ship back­ground to Winckelmann’s studies. 

From 1988 onward, the Winckel­mann Society was involved in the histo­rical-critical edition of Winckelmann’s writings and manu­script estate, which was completed in 2022. Initi­ally funded by the Volks­wagen Foun­da­tion as a German-German project in colla­bo­ra­tion with the Free Univer­sity of Berlin, and later supported by the State of Saxony-Anhalt, the edito­rial project became, in 1996, an under­ta­king of the Academy of Sciences and Lite­ra­ture in Mainz. Inspired by the rese­arch carried out for this edition, the project for a dedi­cated data­base was begun in 1995 and funded by the German Rese­arch Foun­da­tion. Peter Bett­hausen, Thomas Fröh­lich, Volker Heenes, Eva Hofstetter, Brigitte Kuhn, and Sascha Kansteiner contri­buted to the rese­arch and data entry.