Lessing’s Laocoon: An Essay on the Limits of Painting and Poetry (1766) represents a turning point in 18th c. aesthetics. This volume offers detailed presentations about the productive openness of this “irregular collectanea.” Lessing does not intend to propose a systematic aesthetics, but rather to present a “fermenta cognitionis” that, in its totality, offers a panoramic view of the problematics of aesthetics and art history in his time.