Anton Raphael Mengs  

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

(Redirected from Raphael Mengs)
Jump to: navigation, search

"If wo were to form our opinion of RAPHAEL MENGS beforehand, from the description of Winckelmann, we should be much surprised when we came to see his works for ourselves. This is what the author of the History of Art among the Ancients says in his chapter on Beauty: “All the beauties which ancient artists gave to their figures are to be found in the immortal works of M. Anton Raphael Mengs, first painter at the courts of Spain and Poland, the greatest artist of his time, and , perhaps, of future ages. We might almost say that he is Raphael himself, risen like the phoenix from his ashes to teach to the universe the perfection of art, and attain himself as much perfection as is possible for human forces. The German nation justly prides itself on having produced a philosopher who, in the times of our fathers, enlightened sages and strewed the seeds of knowledge among all nations (Leibnitz, I suppose) . It now only remained for her to give the world a restorer of art, and to see the German Raphael recognized and admired as such at Rome, the very seat of the arts.” To understand the hyperbole of this language, we must remember that the son of the poor cobbler of St. Stendal, when he at last succeeded in coming to Rome, when already thirty eight years of age, was received and lodged in the house of Raphael Mengs."--Wonders of European Art (1885) by Louis Viardot

Related e

Wikipedia
Wiktionary
Shop


Featured:

Anton Raphael Mengs (March 12, 1728 – June 29, 1779) was a German painter, active in Rome, Madrid, and Saxony, who became one of the precursors to Neoclassical painting.

Biography

Mengs was born in 1728 at Ústí nad Labem (Template:Lang-de) in Bohemia on 12 March 1728; he died in Rome 29 June 1779. His father, Ismael Mengs, a Danish painter, established himself finally at Dresden, whence in 1741 he took his son to Rome.

In Rome, his fresco painting of Parnassus at Villa Albani gained him a reputation as a master painter. The appointment of Mengs in 1749 as first painter to Frederick Augustus, elector of Saxony did not prevent his spending much time in Rome, where he had married Margarita Quazzi who had sat for him as a model in 1748, and abjured the Protestant faith, and where he became in 1754 director of the Vatican school of painting, nor did this hinder him on two occasions from obeying the call of Charles III of Spain to Madrid. There Mengs produced some of his best work, and specially 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. Among his pupils there was Agustín Esteve. After the completion of this work in 1777, Mengs returned to Rome, and there he died, two years later, in poor circumstances, leaving twenty children, seven of whom were pensioned by the king of Spain. His portraits and autoportraits recall an attention to detail and insight, often lost from the grand manner paintings.

Besides numerous paintings in the Madrid gallery, the Ascension and St Joseph at Dresden, Perseus and Andromeda at Saint Petersburg, and the ceiling of the Villa Albani must be mentioned among his chief works. In 1911, Henry George Percy, 7th Duke of Northumberland, possessed a Holy Family, and the colleges of All Souls and Magdalen, at Oxford, possessed altar-pieces by Mengs's hand.

In his writings, in Spanish, Italian and German, Mengs has put forth his eclectic theory of art, which treats of 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. He would have fancied himself the first neoclassicist, while in fact he may be the last flicker of Baroque art. Or in the words of Wittkower, In the last analysis, he is as much an end as a beginning.

His intimacy with Johann Joachim Winckelmann, who constantly wrote at his dictation, has enhanced his historical importance, for he formed no scholars, and the critic must now concur in Goethe's judgment of Mengs in Winckelmann und sein Jahrhundert; he must deplore 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 was famous for his rivalry with the contemporary Italian painter Pompeo Batoni.

He was buried in the Roman Church of Santi Michele e Magno.

Selected works

  • Ascension (Dresden, Court Church), 1751/1766
  • St Joseph (Dresden, Court Church), 1751/1766
  • Charles III (Madrid, Museo del Prado), 1761

Publications

  • Woermann, Ismael und Raphael Mengs (Leipzig, 1893)




Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Anton Raphael Mengs" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.

Personal tools