When was the concept of "art criticism" first seen?

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The term "art criticism", as well as the first attempt to formulate what it entails, seems to have been created by English painter Jonathan Richardson in 1719, in his essay on the Whole Art of Criticism as it Relates to Painting and an Argument in Behalf of the Science of a Connoisseur. This seems to coincide with the first large-scale public exhibitions of art in the mid 18th century.

Before that there presumably were folks who criticized art, perhaps even serially. But Mr. Richardson seems to have been the first to give this activity a name (or at least the one that stuck).

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Winckelmann, I believe, was the first celebrated major contributor to what we now know as art criticism.

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