  Winckelmann’s History of Ancient Art, published nine years after the essay on imitation, reaffirms his general commitment to contemporary aesthetics as well as his particular emphasis on a certain kind of mental condition as the ultimate source of physical beauty. It nevertheless gives a slightly different and perhaps more plausible account of the Laocoön statue, which by then he had seen first-hand. To general statements on beauty as unity and simplicity (History, p. 196) and the beauty of youthfulness (p. 197) Winckelmann adds a passage on the expression of inward attitude that is reminiscent of his description of the “noble simplicity and quiet grandeur” of the Greeks in the earlier essay: 