Good taste, which is spreading more and more throughout the world, first started to develop in the climate of Greece. All the inventions of foreign peoples came to Greece only as the first seed, as it were, and acquired a different character and form in the country that Minerva, it is said, allocated as an abode for the Greeks, above all other countries, because of the temperate seasons she found there, and because it was a country that would bring forth wise men.

The taste with which this nation imbued its works has remained unique to it. It has rarely spread far from Greece without losing something, and in remote climatic regions it was only recognized late. It was without doubt completely foreign to northern climes at the time when the two arts of which the Greeks are the great teachers found few admirers: at the time when the most admirable works of Correggio were hung up in the royal stables in Stockholm as a covering for the windows.

And it has to be admitted that the really fortunate period was the reign of the great August, in which the arts were introduced into Saxony as a foreign colony.