As the bottom of the sea lies peaceful beneath a foaming surface, a great soul lies sedate beneath the strife of passions in Greek figures.

— Johann Joachim Winckelmann Gedanken über die Nachahmung der Griechischen Werke (1755)

So wie die Tiefe des Meers allezeit ruhig bleibt, die Oberfläche mag noch so wüten, ebenso zeiget der Ausdruck in den Figuren der Griechen bei allen Leidenschaften eine große und gesetzte Seele.

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To the Greek climate we owe the production of Taste, and from thence it spread at length over all the politer world. Every invention, communicated by foreigners to that nation, was but the feed of what it became afterwards, changing both its nature and size in a country, chosen, as Plato says, by Minerva, to be inhabited by the Greeks, as productive of every kind of genius.

Gedanken über die Nachahmung der Griechischen Werke (1755)

The imitation of beauty is either reduced to a single object, and is individual, or, gathering observations from single ones, composes of these one whole. The former we call copying, drawing a portrait; ’tis the straight way to Dutch forms and figures; whereas the other leads to general beauty, and its ideal images, and is the way the Greeks took.

Gedanken über die Nachahmung der Griechischen Werke (1755)

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As the bottom of the sea lies peaceful beneath a foaming surface, a great soul lies sedate beneath the strife of passions in Greek figures.

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