(Skip to bullet points (best for students))
Born: 1728
Died: 1779
Summary of Anton Raphael Mengs
Many people in his day considered Mengs to be the most significant living painter in Europe, and he was known as the “German Raphael” by others. His strong friendship with the Johann Joachim (J.J.) Winckelmann theorist supplied much of the theoretical inspiration for Neoclassicism, which was focused on anatomy, symmetry, and simplicity. Many of Mengs’ previous students have gone on to hold important posts at academies in Copenhagen, Vienna, Dresden, and Turin. He was a staunch supporter of formal arts education and national art academies.
Incorporating Raphael’s expressiveness, Titian’s command of colour, and Correggio’s use of chiaroscuro, Mengs turned the dominant Baroque and Rococo trends into the style that would serve as a bridge between the Baroque period and the new age of Neoclassicism.
In 1757, Mengs was hired by the church of Sant’ Eusebio to paint his first Roman ceiling design. Despite the fact that it was his first large-scale project, it is often regarded as his finest work. It demonstrated Mengs’ predilection for simple symbols and figures portrayed with classical proportion and self-restraint. To some extent, his fresco is regarded as a seminal example of Baroque to Neoclassical style transitional art.
Mengs was a firm believer that creative greatness could only be attained by studying antiquity in depth and moving towards classical revivalism. A dedicated artist with an eye for modern design, nevertheless, that’s what made him stand out. To show his versatility, he used aspects of Baroque illusionism and Rococo colour in his most famous piece, The Dream of Joseph (1773). As a result, historians have placed him in the Baroque as well as the Neoclassical schools.
Mengs initially gained prominence as a pastel portrait artist. It’s true that his skill with pastels was unmatched. A common error people made while looking at his early pictures, such as the one of Irish nobleman William Burton Conyngham, was mistaking them for oil paintings.
Art historian and archaeologist J.J. Winckelmann collaborated with Mengs on a Neoclassical philosophy of art. Mengs has written or co-authored a variety of books in this genre in Spanish, Italian, and German. However, it was his 1762 book Reflections on Beauty and Taste in Painting, as much as his paintings, that had a significant impact on the future of fine art.
Childhood
Mengs was born in the Czech village of Aussig. The son of a miniaturist from Denmark who moved to Dresden, Germany to become the head of the Academy of Fine Arts, Ismael Mengs, he grew up in the centre of the family. With “single-minded, even maniacal, rigour [with the intent to prepare his son] to rival these great predecessors” (to prepare his son to rival these great predecessors), Ismael, a harsh patriarch, named his son Antonio Allegri (better known as Correggio) and Raphael in honour of the painters Antonio Allegri (better known as Correggio) and Raphael. Therese and Julia, Anton’s sisters, became artists as well. Although it has been speculated that the children may have been Jewish or Lutheran, religion was not a component of the children’s upbringing. However, Anton eventually converted to Catholicism.
Ismael’s wife, Anton’s mother, was the household housekeeper, not their biological mother. Ismael brought Charlotte to St. nad Labem for “on vacation” at the end of both pregnancies. They would return to Dresden after the babies were born. Ismael was renowned for his nonchalance in religious issues, so it’s possible he was worried that word of his second family might damage his reputation as a court painter in Saxony, therefore he went to considerable lengths to keep their presence a secret. Polt says this. Ismael and Charlotte eventually got married, but she died only a few months after their fourth child was born. With his family, Anton moved to Rome when he was only 13 years old.
Early Life
Mengs went to Rome with his father in 1740, a year before the family made the permanent relocation to the Italian city. The classicist Marco Benefial taught him how to sketch nudes, and it was at this time that he started to take his art studies seriously. Mengs had already established himself as a precocious prodigy in such a little time. After a short return to Dresden, he found fame as a pastel portrait painter, using dried pastel crayons to create rich, glossy hues and a distinct saturation level. Even though he didn’t start working with oil paint until 1746, these pieces were often mistaken for being oil paintings.
When Mengs returned to Rome in 1741-43, he apprenticed with renowned Baroque painter Sebastiano Conca at his studio. Mengs was appointed court painter by Augustus III of Saxony in 1745 at the age of seventeen. He was twenty-three when he was elevated to chief court painter. During this time period, he visited Rome on many occasions to enhance his creative training. In Italy, he married Margarita Guazzi, a protestant who had posed for one of his pictures back in 1748 and had properly renounced her religion in order to not interfere with her husband’s profession. To paint Queen Mara Amalia (Augustus III’s daughter), he also went to Naples.
Mengs produced portraits such as that of Prince Elector Frederic Christian of Saxony, painted the same year Augustus III of Saxony appointed him principal court painter, using oil paints rather than pastels starting about 1746. Italian painter Pompeo Batoni, who was likewise very talented and sought after by nobles, was Mengs’ main competition in portraiture. The two portraitists, however, had quite distinct approaches to their work, according to art historian David Bardeen Mengs attempted to portray the personality of his subjects by paying more attention to their facial characteristics than Batoni did in his portraits (such as his Portrait of John Talbot (1773)).
Mid Life
When Mengs and Johann Joachim (J.J.) Winckelmann met because of their common interest in Ancient Greek, Greco-Roman and Roman art and antiquities, they became close. This relationship lasted until Mengs’ death in 1786. This link may have brought Mengs to the notice of King Charles of Naples, who had financed the excavations at Herculaneum and Pompeii and amassed a significant antiquities collection himself, and who was also interested in ancient art. It would be true, however, that the excavations at Herculaneum and Pompeii would bring disgrace to both Mengs and Winckelmann’s names. Mengs (who confessed to his crime on his deathbed) had fabricated a work with Jupiter Kissing Ganymede (1761) that was passed off by others as an authentic piece from the dig, it was revealed in subsequent years. Mengs. Winckelmann, on the other hand, was blind to the fraud and treated Mengs’s and the other forgeries as authentic in the first edition of Geschichte der Kunst, his landmark book.
King Charles III of Spain was crowned in 1759 and invited Mengs to serve as a court painter in Madrid in 1761. Here he worked on the royal residences’ interior decoration. Mengs was well-cared-for by the King. A house and stables were provided as well as a staff of servants. In addition to his substantial income, he got pensions for Mengs’s five daughters and protection for his two sons from his estate. On matters such as royal art collection acquisitions and judgement of other Spanish artists’ work, Mengs offered advice to King Ferdinand III. He also helped set up a public gallery in Madrid’s Palacio del Buen Retiro and directed royal factories like the Madrid tapestry factory where he introduced popular images of Spanish native artists to tapestries.
Mengs was also planning on becoming involved with the Academia de San Fernando. Many members, on the other hand, were displeased about listening to a foreign artist lecture them, whom they saw as arrogant and condescending. According to Polt’s explanation, “As a result, Mengs felt that although the Academy should be first and foremost a place for artists to learn and grow, it also included highly positioned laymen who viewed it as a means to further the government’s goals of education and development. As a result, they had significant power in the Academy, despite the fact that Mengs believed they should have no say in its operations “(Phrase). The quantity of theory, viewpoint, and anatomy instruction also expanded under Mengs. Numerous people objected to the new course of study.
When Mengs released his Thoughts on Painting’s Beauty and Taste in 1762, it was a huge success. The Spanish diplomat and Mengs’ friend, José Nicolás de Azara, who published a number of Mengs’ writings after his death, argued that Mengs “was a philosopher and painted for philosophers” that he was born “to restore the arts” and that his art revealed more about the “movements of the soul” than “the greatest philosopher since Socrates”…………………….
Mengs stayed in Spain until 1769, when he returned to China. At 1773, he went to Madrid for a second time, this time to paint the Camera dei Papiri in the Vatican. A seventeenth-century Spanish art critic named Juan Agustn Cean Bered wrote that nearly all of the city’s young painters (including Francisco Bayeu, Mariano Maella, Gregorio Ferro, Francisco Rams and Francisco Agustn) sought out Mengs because he was “a teacher and protector who guided them along the right path and obtained commissions and promotions for those he considered worthy” who guided them down the right path while also obtaining commissions and promotions for those he deemed worthy. Along the way, Mengs became friends with engraver Manuel Salvador Carmona, who would go on to marry Mengs’s daughter Anna Mara Theresia and collaborate on projects together.
Late Life
But despite his fame and wealth, Mengs was miserable in Spain with his family. It was written to one of his students at the University of Rome in 1768, and it reads, “never in the world have I lived more humiliated and more afflicted, I am forced to spend everything in this country and I live devoid of any fate of pleasures, the hardships always increase, my strength deteriorates almost daily, my youth passes, without my being able to merit among a people of enemies, for all this and for other troubles I have lost all joy, nor is life more desirable for me”
In part, Mengs’s health had deteriorated as a result of all the fresco painting he’d done. The family moved back to Rome in 1769, and it’s possible that Azara introduced him to Francisco Goya in 1771 when they were both living in Rome. From Madrid, Goya was commissioned by Mengs, who subsequently recommended him as a court painter with regular commissions and a regular income in 1774. Upon his return to Rome in June of 1777, he painted frescos, altarpieces, and portraits of English nobles on tour for whom he also sometimes served as an art dealer for the remainder of his short life. It is well known that Romans had a great regard for Mengs, since he was accepted into the esteemed Accademia di San Luca and the Accademia del Nudo where he taught. Mengs died in 1779 from TB, leaving a legacy of around twenty children (seven of whom were pensioned by the King of Spain). Upon his death, he was laid to rest at Rome’s Church of Santi Michele e Magno.
A major role in the creation of the early Neoclassical style, Mengs, together with French painters Nicolas Pouzin and Claude Lorrain, successfully supplanted the extremely elaborate and ornamental Baroque and Rococo forms. Not just in art, but also in society as a whole, a return to austere Greek and Roman classicism was seen. As Mengs’s closest friend, the art historian, archaeologist, and neoclassicist Johann Joachim Winckelmann’s works had a major role in this transition (whom he nevertheless tricked into believing a work he had forged was a genuine work). No matter how their relationship was tarnished by their disagreement, the two men advocated Neoclassicism as a comprehensive philosophy of life, an effort to restore society’s morals, prudence, and politeness in their day (virtues that had been displaced by the frivolity and vanity embodied within the Baroque and Rococo styles).
Additionally, Mengs published essays in Spanish, Italian, and German that advocated for a return to the study of classical classics, especially those that focused on symmetry, mathematics, and anatomy. A well-known literary scholar and Guggenheim fellow has said that “Mengs saw painting as a kind of nature copy, even if it was better than nature itself in certain ways. This copying, on the other hand, is not to be slavishly copied but rather an imitation that is “ideal.” “‘s a good place to start. Arts must “must imitate those parts of natural objects that convey to us the unique essence of the thing we perceive” as Mengs himself noted. Polt maintains that the work he created was “Mengs saw this as a path to knowledge that included dissection and reconstruction. Painting was a “noble or liberal art, since study, a high mind, and a noble spirit are required, in addition to being a way of acquiring respect and nobility.” “is a good example of this.
In spite of the fact that Mengs was once considered “Mengs was widely regarded in his day as Europe’s greatest living painter,” according to Polt, and his book Reflections on Beauty and Taste in Painting had a significant impact on the art world during his lifetime, his fame “declined precipitously” after his death. Art historians like Thomas Pelzel and Xavier de Salas, who have recently renewed interest in Mengs and his work, refer to him as “a painter of great skills” and as “one of the last important painters in [the Renaissance-Baroque] tradition. De Salas, on the other hand, referred to him as a “great painter” who had created a distinctive style that expressed “a dream of beauty” He influenced many notable painters of the Neoclassical period, including Jacques-Louis David, Benjamin West, Angelica Kauffman and Jean Auguste-Dominique Ingres, as well as Francisco Bayeu and Anton von Maron.
Famous Art by Anton Raphael Mengs
The Pertinent Magdalene
1752
Augustus III recruited a small army of Italian philosophers and artists to his Dresden Court in an attempt to establish a “new Venice” in Saxony (thus the name “Augustan Dresden”). His Italian contingent included not only medical professionals but also artists such as poet Stefano Benedetto Pallavicini, architect Gaetano Chiaveri, sculptor Lorenzo Mattielli, set designer Giuseppe Galli Bibiena, and many more painters. Christian Wilhelm Ernst Dietrich was sent in the opposite direction as Mengs and instructed to get acquainted with Classical and Renaissance art. Weddigen writes in his book Art History: A Short Introduction “This network of diplomats and art brokers served the interests of the Saxon court in Venice and Bologna in particular and helped to open up the Italian peninsula to Saxon imports. […] Augustan Dresden was originally intended to be a new baroque Venice rather than a Renaissance neo-‘Florence on the Elbe,’ or a ‘German Florence.’ “‘s a good example of this.
Portrait of William Burton Conyngham
1754-1755
Mengs began his career painting portraits, beginning with pastels like this one of Irish nobleman William Burton Conyngham, who went on to become a Member of Parliament. Conyngham most likely commissioned the painting as a souvenir of his European travels (that is, the custom of the time for young, wealthy, European men to travel around Europe to acquire greater knowledge and become more “cultured”). This picture of Conyngham shows him gazing out into the horizon to his right, with a face that conveys both youthful spontaneity and confident self-assurance.
Using just pastels, Mengs created works that seemed like they had been painted with oil paints because of the intense saturation and glossy radiance they achieved. The beautiful crimson velvet robe worn by Conyngham and the reflection of light on the sitter’s nose and lips, as well as the moist expression in his eyes, show this. Mengs’ unique gift for portraiture propelled him to stardom at an early age. Portrait painter Francois-André Vincent, who was a generation younger than Mengs, was inspired by Mengs’ approach, according to art historian David Bardeen. To use the same tools as Mengs, Vincent used casually stylish clothing, parted lips, natural hair, and piercing eyes to give his subject an interesting mix of calm dignity and psychological intensity. Says Bardeen.
The Apotheosis of Saint Eusebius
1757-1759
It was Mengs’ first major work in Rome, and his first fresco, when he was commissioned to paint the ceiling of Sant’Eusebio church in 1757. Using this fresco, Mengs demonstrated his taste for simplicity and restraint by combining the traditional with the innovative.
Saint Eusebius, a fourth-century Sardinian bishop, is seen in white and red robes in the middle of the extended pictorial area, often regarded his masterwork. It seems as though he is embracing the glory of God with respect with his left hand extended and palm-up, while his right hand grips his chest and his face is turned upwards toward a brilliant light beaming down from the work’s peak. Some of the putti carry the iconographic emblems for St. Eusebius, a chalice and chain, while others hold the Prologue of St. John’s Gospel and the words “homoousios to Patri” from Nicene Christianity’s credo. He is surrounded by all of these people (“consubstantial with the Father”).
Parnassus
1761
Cardinal Alessandro Albani commissioned this ceiling painting, which shows Mengs’ desire to depart from Baroque style. While Raphael’s fresco, Parnas in the Stanza della Segnatura in the Vatican Palace, is the main inspiration for the composition, it isn’t exact. Instead, the scene is set outdoors in front of a small grove of trees, with Apollo (the Greek “Sun God” and God of the arts) in the centre, identifiable by his typical accoutrements: a crown, a laurel wreath which he holds in his right hand, and There are two groups of Muses portrayed on each side of the work: Calliope, Polyhymnia, Euterpe, Melpomene (the mother of the Muses), and Urania on the right, and Clio, Thalia, Erato, and Terpsichore on the left. Each group is represented by a different colour. There are a lot of Muses seated and staring at Apollo, but Erato and Terpsichore are seen dancing joyfully, their robes billowing as they whirl.
The Dream of Joseph
1773
Because of the Catholic church’s apprehensions about the tale of Joseph, few representations of him appear in Renaissance art. Especially troubling was the notion that a wedding ceremony might include an incident in which a woman came at the altar already holding a kid. Because of the everlasting splendour of Mary, most artists chose to depict Joseph as a supporting character or a figure in the background while creating altar pieces. However, Joseph “came into his own” in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries when artists sought fresh energy and inventions.. Three dreams that Joseph had are recorded in the Gospel of Matthew. After the death of King Herod, he is ordered to return to Israel, and the third instructs him to move his family to Nazareth in the Galilee area to avoid the wrath of Archelaus, who had replaced his father as King Herod. The second dream is supposedly shown in Mengs’ artwork.
Johann Joachim Winckelmann
1777
An after-the-fact picture of Winckelmann (who died in 1768) shows him with a copy of Homer’s Iliad, showing the artist’s admiration for his friend’s scholarship and knowledge. In the eyes of art historians, Winckelmann’s “aesthetic analysis” constituted a “foundation stone for of modern art history methodology” and his place in the pantheon of arts academics was well-established. This artist is well known for the magnum-opus Geschichte der Kunst des Alterhums (1764), which defined an ideal aesthetic in art. The unfortunate thing is that Winckelmann’s reputation and ego were shattered by Pelzel’s admission that he had written an enthusiastic description of fake antique paintings, while knowing well that they were not the real thing.
Dancing Faun
1778
Mengs created a slew of nude studies, many of which were inspired by an old Roman statue at Florence’s Uffizi Gallery, popularly known as the Dancing Faun (although the figure is more accurately referred to as a satyr). Ferdinando II de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, owned this statue when it was first documented in 1665 in Florence. As though he’s dancing, the figure holds cymbals in each hand and has his body twisted in an odd way. However, the remainder of the figure shows Mengs’ excellent ability to portray the human body and its muscle, despite his unfinished work on the feet.
BULLET POINTED (SUMMARISED)
Best for Students and a Huge Time Saver
- Many people in his day considered Mengs to be the most significant living painter in Europe, and he was known as the “German Raphael” by others.
- His strong friendship with the Johann Joachim (J.J.) Winckelmann theorist supplied much of the theoretical inspiration for Neoclassicism, which was focused on anatomy, symmetry, and simplicity.
- Many of Mengs’ previous students have gone on to hold important posts at academies in Copenhagen, Vienna, Dresden, and Turin.
- He was a staunch supporter of formal arts education and national art academies.
- Incorporating Raphael’s expressiveness, Titian’s command of colour, and Correggio’s use of chiaroscuro, Mengs turned the dominant Baroque and Rococo trends into the style that would serve as a bridge between the Baroque period and the new age of Neoclassicism.
- In 1757, Mengs was hired by the church of Sant’ Eusebio to paint his first Roman ceiling design.
- Despite the fact that it was his first large-scale project, it is often regarded as his finest work.
- It demonstrated Mengs’ predilection for simple symbols and figures portrayed with classical proportion and self-restraint.
- To some extent, his fresco is regarded as a seminal example of Baroque to Neoclassical style transitional art.
- Mengs was a firm believer that creative greatness could only be attained by studying antiquity in depth and moving towards classical revivalism.
- A dedicated artist with an eye for modern design, nevertheless, that’s what made him stand out.
- To show his versatility, he used aspects of Baroque illusionism and Rococo colour in his most famous piece, The Dream of Joseph (1773).
- As a result, historians have placed him in the Baroque as well as the Neoclassical schools.
- Mengs initially gained prominence as a pastel portrait artist.
- It’s true that his skill with pastels was unmatched.
- A common error people made while looking at his early pictures, such as the one of Irish nobleman William Burton Conyngham, was mistaking them for oil paintings.
- Art historian and archaeologist J.J. Winckelmann collaborated with Mengs on a Neoclassical philosophy of art.
Information Citations
En.wikipedia.org, https://en.wikipedia.org/.
