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The relation between Winckelmann and Pausanias-the one the author of the most extensive account of the topography of ancient Greece, the other among its most influential modern imaginators-might seem an obvious area for exploration. Yet Pausanias has so far received little attention from writers on Winckelmann. One reason for this, perhaps, is Winckelmann's own emphasis upon autopsy: his insistence on first-hand observation of works of art and contempt for learning that relies on books (Winckelmann 2006: 71-76). Yet the image of Winckelmann as (solely) an enraptured viewer has long since been exploded; Schadewaldt (1954) and Décultot (2000) have both emphasized the extent to which his putatively fresh and visual approach to antiquity relies on reading practices that hark back to ancient and Renaissance writers. Neglect of Pausanias contrasts with the interest commentators have shown in other possible influences. Kraus (1935) and Schadewaldt (1941) have explored Winckelmann's engagement with Homer, Potts (1994) and Décultot (2000) have discussed his reading of French Enlightenment philosophes. In none of these works does Pausanias receive more than a passing mention. Perhaps more relevant (as well as slightly sinister) is the fact that some earlier scholars did not so much overlook Pausanias' importance to Winckelmann as seek to minimize it. Such appears to be Senff's agenda in the introduction to his 1964 edition of the History. Senff's professed aim was to uncover the sources of Winckelmann's Hauptwerk; his introduction nevertheless invites suspicion that his real aim was to shield the art historian from any charge of depending upon 'inferior' writers, such as Pausanias, for his approach. Proclaiming that 'It is incorrect to portray him as an epigone of the writers, rhetors and sophists ['Skribenten, Rhetoren und Sophisten'] of the first two centuries of our era', Senff goes on to divide Winckelmann's sources into several groups. The principal outcome of his categorization is a strong distinction between 'the great historians... poets... and philosophers of Greece' (together with those of the Enlightenment) and the mere 'Skribenten' (Senff 1964: 2-3). Senff does not doubt the importance of the first group (which includes Herodotus, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, Homer and Virgil), stating that Winckelmann 'bowed down in awe' before such 'giants' as these, as he had 'studied the

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As Vout (2006) has recently reminded us in this journal, Johann Joachim Winckelmann's History of the art of antiquity (Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums, 1st ed. 1764) is widely considered to be a foundational text in the history of art. Advertising itself as the first ‘systematic’ account of ancient art in relation to its geographical, social and political circumstances, Winckelmann filled out the well-known Plinian chronology of artists with a new analysis in terms of a succession of period styles, providing a satisfyingly scientific justification for the preference his contemporaries were beginning to accord to the art of the Greeks. Small wonder then that the book was lauded as a classic as soon as it appeared in Germany and was quickly translated into French and Italian. Nevertheless, it is also hardly surprising that this text, which promised nothing less than a ‘new paradigm’ for the study of antique culture, has always presented problems to its readers. These are partly caused by its magnitude of ambition. Titled, first and foremost, a ‘history’, Winckelmann's magnum opus in fact attempts to be many things: part systematic exploration of the social and physical factors that condition the development of all art; part impassioned disquisition on the essence of beauty; part antiquarian catalogue of the greatest surviving works of Greek and Roman art; part manual of aesthetic taste for aspiring contemporary artists. Few books since Winckelmann's History can have combined bold claims about their importance as historical scholarship with detailed instructions on how to draw a perfectly beautiful face.

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