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Abstract:  WINCKELMANN’S CULTURAL HERITAGE: CARLO FEA AND THE SECOND EDITION OF THE HISTORY OF DRAWING ARTS IN THE ANCIENT TIMES This essay reconstructs the main editorial stages and literary features of the second Italian translation of Winckelmann’s Storia delle Arti del Disegno presso gli Antichi (Rome, 1783-1786), edited by the scholar and antiquarian Carlo Fea. Initially, the editor’s intention had been simply to reprint the first Italian translation of Winckelmann’s masterpiece, published in Milan in 1779. Having found serious mistakes in it, he preferred to publish a radically new edition, revising both the text and its scholarly structure. In this day by day work of revision Fea was assisted by several collaborators. Among them, the Spanish scholar and ambassador José Nicolàs de Azara, and Winckelmann’s former German friend and agent, Johann Friederich Reiffenstein, deserve to be remembered, Reiffenstein’s assistance gave the new edition both prestige and scientific reliability among Winckelmann’s followers both in and outside Germany. Notwithstanding Reiffenstein’s authoritative collaboration, however, Fea’s translation did not completely salve linguistic and conceptual doubts and misunderstandings which characterized the former translation. Positively reviewed by many authoritative Italian and German periodicals, Carlo Fea’s edition found an extraordinary reader in Johann Wolfgang Goethe at the time of his first Roman sojourn between 1786 and 1787.