By applying Greek genre standards, Winckelmann overlooks the Egyptians' success in realizing the very different genre-purposes and genre-rules that Egyptian sculpture actually aspires to realize.
Winckelmann(as a historical figure whose approach to art criticism is being critiqued)
Johann Joachim Winckelmann was an 18th-century German art historian who greatly influenced how people understood and valued Greek art, often treating Greek standards as the highest measure of artistic achievement.
genre-rules(Contrasted across ancient Greek tragedy versus Shakespearean tragedy, and Greek versus Egyptian sculpture.)
The formal conventions and standards specific to a genre, which derive from and serve that genre's distinctive purpose.
Moreover, Herder emphasizes that correctly identifying the genre of a work by these means is vitally important not only for interpreting the work correctly, but also for critically evaluating it correctly: French critics not only make an interpretive mistake when they go to Shakespeare’s tragedies with a genre in mind from the ancient world that was not in fact his, but they also, on this basis, make an evaluative mistake: because they falsely assume that he somehow must be aspiring to realize t