 Art is not a mere ‘imitation’ or ‘representation’ of nature; art is the product of a creative force. This sentence, crystallizing one of the fundamental ideas of German Romantic aesthetics, constitutes the core of one of A.W. Schlegel’s most well-known Berlin lectures. It was published in the Viennese journal, Prometheus in 1808 and re-collected in his Kritische Schriften (1828) as Über das Verhältniss der schönen Kunst zur Natur; Über Täuschung und Wahrscheinlichkeit; Über Manier und Stil (On the Relationship of Art to Nature; On Illusion and Probability; On Style and Manner). The importance of this essay lies not only in this thesis (an idea that we also find in other texts of that period, such as Schelling’s 1807 essay Über das Verhältniß der bildenden Künsten zu der Natur (On the Relationship of Visual Arts to Nature), but rather in the way Schlegel developed his argument.