Anton Raphael Mengs (March 22, 1728 â€“ June 29, 1779) was a German Bohemian painter, active in Rome, Madrid and Saxony, who became one of the precursors to Neoclassical painting.

Early life

Mengs was born in 1728 at Ãšstí nad Labem (German: Aussig) in Bohemia, the son of Ismael Mengs (da), a Danish painter who eventually established himself at Dresden. In 1741 Mengs' father took him from Dresden to Rome.

Career

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 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. In 1754 he became director of the Vaticanschool of painting, and 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 Trajanand the Temple of Glory His pupils in Spain included Agustín Esteve. 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 his paintings in the grand manner.

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. 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". 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.

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 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.

Theoretical writings

In his writings, in Spanish, Italian and German, Mengs expressed an 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

Death

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