Anton Raphael Mengs

Anton Raphael Mengs (12 March 1728 – 29 June 1779) was a Czech-Born German Neoclassical painter of Danish descent.

Early life

Mengs was born on 12 March 1728, at Ústí nad Labem in the Kingdom of Bohemia, the son of Ismael Mengs, a Danish-born painter who eventually established himself at Dresden, where the court of Electorate of Saxony and Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth electors and kings was. His older sister, Therese Concordia Maron, was also a painter, as was his younger sister, Julia.

His and Therese's births in Bohemia were mere coincidence. Their mother was not their father's wife; Ismael carried on a years-long affair with the family's housekeeper, Charlotte Bormann. In an effort to conceal the births of two illegitimate children, Ismael took Charlotte, under the pretext of "vacations", to the nearest bigger town abroad, Ústí nad Labem (90 km upstream of the Elbe river). At least in Anton's case, Ismael Mengs took his baby and Charlotte back to Dresden a few weeks after the birth. There they lived for the next 13 years.

In 1741, Ismael moved his family from Dresden to Rome, where he copied in miniature some works of Raphael for the Elector of Saxony, which were intended for Dresden.

Adulthood In 1749, Anton Raphael Mengs was appointed the first painter to Frederick Augustus, Elector of Saxony, but this did not prevent him from continuing to spend much of his time in Rome. There he married Margarita Guazzi, who had sat for him as a model in 1748. 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's painting is full-sized, but he adapted the composition to a rectangular format and added other figures. It is now in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum.

He converted to Catholicism, and in 1754 he became director of the Vatican painting school. In 1757, Mengs painted a superb fresco on the dome of the church of Sant'Eusebio in Rome. His fresco painting Parnassus at Villa Albani gained him a reputation as a master painter.

Mengs died in Rome in June 1779 and was buried there in the Church of Santi Michele e Magno.

Career

His portraits and self-portraits show an attention to detail and insight often lost in his grander paintings. His closeness to Johann Joachim Winckelmann has enhanced his historical importance. Mengs came to share Winckelmann's enthusiasm for classical antiquity, and worked to establish the dominance of Neoclassical painting over the then popular Rococo style. 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". 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). His pupils in Spain included Agustín Esteve, Francisco Bayeu and Mariano Salvador Maella.

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. Another altar-piece was installed in Magdalen College, Oxford.

Theoretical writings Mengs wrote about art in Spanish, Italian, and German. His friendship with Winckelmann notwithstanding, Mengs was little influenced by Winckelmann's ideas; the basis of his extensive writings on art is to be found in the traditional theories that go back to Bellori. He reveals an eclectic theory of art that sees perfection as attainable through a well-balanced fusion of diverse excellences: Greek design combined 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) Portrait of Ferdinand I (National Museum of Capodimonte, Naples, Italy), 1759 Charles III (Museo del Prado, Madrid), 1761 Infante Don Louis de Borbon (Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio)

Gallery