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 :. | Das Urteil des Paris | Allegory of History | Portrait of Maria Carolina of Austria | Holy Roman Emperor | British painter |
Related Artists:
Josehp Bruggemann
painted Vista do Desterro in 1867
Carl Nebel
Carl/Carlos Nebel (March 18, 1805 - June 4, 1855) was a German engineer, architect and draughtsman, best known for his detailed paintings of the Mexican landscape and people and of the battles of the Mexican-American War. Nebel was born at Altona, today a part of Hamburg. After studies in Hamburg and Paris, he travelled to America, where he was a resident of Mexico from 1829 until 1834. In 1836, he published in Paris his renowned illustrated work on that country-Voyage pittoresque et archeologique dans la partie la plus interessante du Mexique, with 50 lithographs made from his paintings, twenty of which were hand-colorized, and an introduction written by Alexander Humboldt.
SERODINE, Giovanni
Italian Baroque Era Painter, 1600-1630 Italian painter and stuccoist. His family moved from Ascona on Lake Maggiore to Rome, where his father is recorded in 1595. It is probable that Serodine was born there. His first work was probably done in association with his brother Giovanni Battista Serodine (1589/90-1630), a stuccoist active in Rome, where he carved a Virgin and Child (1614) for the fa?ade of S Francesca Romana, and in Ascona, where he restored the family home and decorated it with stucco (1620). The design and stucco decoration of the church of the Madonna della Fortuna on Monte Verit? (Ascona) are attributed to him, though it is probable that Giovanni (who is recorded in Ascona in 1620) collaborated in the work. The first of Giovanni's documented official commissions, however, was for the stucco decoration and apsidal paintings in the chuch of the Concezione at Spoleto, where he worked with Sante Ghezzi (Corradini; Toscano). These murals, painted in tempera and completed in July 1624, are sketchy and clumsily executed, quite distinct in their inferior quality and naive piety from the rest of Serodine's work. They are probably his first attempts at painting,