Anton Raphael Mengs
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 :. | British painter | Self-portrait | Self ortrait | Night by Anton Raphael Mengs | Portrait of Maria Carolina of Austria Queen consort of Naples and Sicily | Related Artists: Edward Jukes Greig b. 1839 Melbourne, Victoria
Also known as E. J. G.
Artist (Draughtsman), (Cartoonist / Illustrator), (Painter)
Colonial Victorian painter, cartoonist and illustrator.
Birth datec.1839Birth placeMelbourne, VictoriaDeath date4 October 1864Death placeSydney, New South Wales.
Residence 1864 11 Crown Street, Millers Point, Sydney, New South Wales
c.1860- c.1864 171 Victoria Parade, Melbourne, Victoria
Active Period 1860- 1864
Vieira Portuense
(Porto, 13 May 1765 - Funchal, 2 May 1805), who choose the artistic name of Vieira Portuense, was a Portuguese painter, one of the introducers of Neoclassicism in Portuguese painting. He was, in the neoclassical style, one of the two great Portuguese painters of his generation, with Domingos Sequeira.
He first studied in Lisbon, later moving to Rome. He traveled through Italy, Germany, Austria and England, before returning to Portugal, in 1800. He met Swiss painter Angelika Kauffmann, from whom he seems to have received influences. He seems to anticipate some motives of the romantic painting in several of his historical paintings, like "Dona Filipa de Vilhena knighting her sons" (1801).
He contracted tuberculosis, and moved to Madeira, were he died, aged only 39.
He is represented at the National Museum of Ancient Art, in Lisbon, and at the National Museum Soares dos Reis, in Porto.
Not to be confused with another Portuguese painter, Francisco Vieira de Matos, better known as Vieira Lusitano.
Abraham Evertsz. van Westerveldpainted Cornelis Tromp in Roman costume in 1650-1692
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