1728-1779 Dutch Anton Raphael Mengs Gallery Mengs was born in 1728 at Usti nad Labem (German: Aussig) 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 Agust??n 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.  Related Paintings of Anton Raphael Mengs :. | Portrait of Maria Antonia Walpurgis of Bavaria | self-Portrait (nn03) | Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane | Charles III of Spain | The Holy Family |
Related Artists:
Federico zandomeneghi
Italian Painter, 1841-1917 .Italian painter. His father Pietro and grandfather Luigi tried to interest him in the plastic arts, but from a very early age he showed a stronger inclination for painting. Zandomeneghi soon rebelled against their teachings, and by 1856 he was attending the Accademia di Belle Arti in Venice, studying under the painters Michelangelo Grigoletti (1801-70) and Pompeo Molmenti (1819-94). As a Venetian he was born an Austrian subject, and, to escape conscription, he fled his city in 1859 and went to Pavia, where he enrolled at the university. In the following year he followed Garibaldi in the Expedition of the Thousand; afterwards, having been convicted of desertion and therefore unable to return to Venice, he went to Florence, where he remained from 1862 to 1866. This period was essential for his artistic development. In Tuscany he frequented the Florentine painters known as the Macchiaioli, with some of whom he took part in the Third Italian War of Independence (1866). Zandomeneghi formed a strong friendship with Telemaco Signorini and Diego Martelli, with whom he corresponded frequently for the rest of his life. In this period he painted the Palazzo Pretorio of Florence
F.Rivoire
Fr.1842-1919
Theodore Henry Fielding
Fielding, TH (Theodore Henry), 1781-1851