Anton Raphael Mengs
Paintings
The Dream of St Joseph
St John the Baptist Preaching in the Wilderness
Perseus and Andromeda
Truth
Archduchess Maria Teresa of Austria with a caged parrot
Johann Joachim Winckelmann
Portrait of the Artist's Father, Ismael Mengs
Gabriel de Bourbon. Infante of Spain
Charles IV Prince of Asturias
Leopold of Lorraine Grand Duke of Tuscany
Infante Francisco Javier of Spain
Self-portrait
Antonio Pascual de Bourbon. Infante of Spain
The Head of an Apostle
The Head of an Apostle
Charles III
Maria Amalia of Saxony
Saint John The Baptist In The Desert
Jupiter and Ganymede
Self-Portrait
Portrait of Queen Maria Carolina of Austria
Penitent Magdalen
Portrait of Cardinal Zelada
Descent
Francis Archduke of Austria
Adoration of the Shepherds
Portrait of Johann Joachim Winckelmann
Self-Portrait
Self-Portrait
The Immaculate Conception
Maria Josepha Lorraine, Archduchess of Austria
Maria Carolina of Habsburg-Lorraine, Queen of Naples
Maria Luisa of Bourbon, Grand Duchess of Tuscany
Maria Luisa of Parma, Princess of Asturias
Archduke Ferdinand and Maria Anna of Austria
Hesperus as Personification of the Evening
Helios as Personification of Midday
Portrait of John Viscount Garlies, later 7th Earl of Galloway, as Master of Garlies
Maria Luisa of Parma, Princess of Asturias
Portrait of the Elector Friedrich Christian
Portrait of the singer Domenico Annibali
Anton Raphael Mengs (March 22, 1728[1] – June 29, 1779) was a German Bohemian painter, active in Rome, Madrid and Saxony, who became one of the precursors to Neoclassical painting.
Biography
Self-portrait by Anton Raphael Mengs
Mengs was born in 1728 at Ústí nad Labem (German: Aussig) in Bohemia, the son of Ismael Mengs (da), a Danish painter who eventually established himself at Dresden. In 1741 Mengs's father took him from Dresden to Rome. In Rome, his fresco painting of Parnassus at Villa Albani gained him a reputation as a master painter. In 1749 he was appointed first painter to Frederick Augustus, elector of Saxony, but this did not prevent him from spending much of his time in Rome. There he married Margarita Guazzi, who had sat for him as a model in 1748. He converted to Catholicism, and in 1754 he became director of the Vatican school of painting.
In 1749 Mengs accepted a commission from the Duke of Northumberland to make a copy, in oil on canvas, of Raphael's fresco The School of Athens for his London home. Executed in 1752–5, Mengs' painting is full-sized, but adapts the composition to a rectangular format, with some additional figures.It is now in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum.[2] Mengs died in Rome in June 1779 and was buried in the Roman Church of Santi Michele e Magno.
Career
Anton Raphael Mengs - Self-portrait
On two occasions he accepted invitations from Charles III of Spain to go to Madrid. There he produced some of his best work, most notably the ceiling of the banqueting hall of the Royal Palace of Madrid, the subject of which was the Triumph of Trajan and the Temple of Glory. After the completion of this work in 1777, Mengs returned to Rome, where he died two years later, in poor circumstances, leaving twenty children, seven of whom were pensioned by the king of Spain. His portraits and self-portraits recall an attention to detail and insight often lost in his grander paintings.
His closeness to Johann Joachim Winckelmann[3] has enhanced his historical importance. Mengs came to share Winckelmann's enthusiasm for classical antiquity, and worked to establish the dominance of Neoclassical painting. At the same time, however, the influence of the Roman Baroque remained strong in his work, particularly in his religious paintings. He would have fancied himself the first neoclassicist, while in fact he may be the last flicker of Baroque art. Rudolf Wittkower wrote: "In the last analysis, he is as much an end as a beginning".[4] In Winckelmann und sein Jahrhundert, Goethe regretted that "so much learning should have been allied to a total want of initiative and poverty of invention, and embodied with a strained and artificial mannerism."
Mengs had a well-known rivalry with the contemporary Italian painter Pompeo Batoni. He was also a friend of Giacomo Casanova. Casanova provides accounts of his personality and contemporary reputation through anecdotes in his Histoire de Ma Vie. Among his pupils in Italy were Anton von Maron, Antonio Maron (Vienna, 1731- Naples 1761).[5] His pupils in Spain included Agustín Esteve.
Besides numerous paintings in Madrid, the Ascension and St Joseph at Dresden, Perseus and Andromeda at Saint Petersburg, and the ceiling of the Villa Albani are among his chief works. In 1911, Henry George Percy, 7th Duke of Northumberland, possessed Mengs's work entitled Holy Family, and the colleges of All Souls and Magdalen, at Oxford, possessed altar-pieces by Mengs.
Theoretical writings
In his writings, in Spanish, Italian, and German, Mengs expressed an eclectic theory of art, seeing perfection as attainable by a well-schemed combination of diverse excellences: Greek design, with the expression of Raphael, the chiaroscuro of Correggio, and the colour of Titian.
Selected works
Ascension (Dresden, Court Church), 1751/1766
St Joseph (Dresden, Court Church), 1751/1766
The Glory of Saint Eusebius (ceiling fresco, Sant'Eusebio, Rome), 1757 (modello, oil on canvas, National Gallery of Canada Ottawa)
Charles III (Madrid, Museo del Prado), 1761
See also
Karl Woermann, Ismael und Raphael Mengs (Leipzig, 1893)
Notes
"Anton Raphael Mengs (Bohemian painter)". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved March 30, 2012.
"The School of Athens (after Raphael)". Victoria and Albert Museum. Retrieved 3 July 2014.
"Web Gallery of Art, image collection, virtual museum, searchable database of European fine arts (1000-1900)". wga.hu.
Wittkower, p 469
Supplemento alla Serie dei trecento elogi e ritratti degli uomini i più illustri in Pittura , Scultura, e Architettura. by Pellegrino Antonio Orlandi, published by Stamperia Allegrini, Pisoni, e comp, Florence (1776); column 1368-1369.
A case for an attribution to Giovanni Casanova, brother of the famous memoirist and rake, was made by Thomas Pelzel, "Winckelmann, Mengs and Casanova: A Reappraisal of a Famous Eighteenth-Century Forgery", The Art Bulletin 54.3 (September 1972:300-315).
Sources
Wittkower, Rudolf (1993). "Art and Architecture Italy, 1600–1750". Pelican History of Art. 1980. Penguin Books Ltd. p. 469.
"Anthon Rafael Mengs". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. 1913.
Neil Jeffares, Dictionary of pastellists before 1800, online edition
Public Domain This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
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