Anton Raphael Mengs

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Mengs portrait o Pape Clement XIII

Anton Raphael Mengs (Mairch 12, 1728 - June 29, 1779) wis a German penter.

Mengs wis born in 1728 at Usti (Aussig) in Bohemia, but his faither, Ismael Mengs, a Dens penter, estaiblisht hissel finally at Dresden, whance in 1741 he teuk his son tae Rome. The appyntment o Mengs in 1749 as first penter tae Frederick Augustus, elector o Saxony didna hinder his spendin muckle time in Rame, whaur he haed mairiet on Margarita Quazzi that haed sat for him as a model in 1748, an abjured the Protestant faith, an whaur he became in 1754 guider o the Vatican schuil o pentin, nor did this hinder him on twa occasions frae obeyin the hoy o Charles III o Spain tae Madrid. Thare Mengs produced some o his best wark, an specially the ceil o the banqueting-haw, its subject bein the Triumph o Trajan an the Temple o Glore. Efter the completion o this wark in 1777, Mengs gaed back tae Rame, an thare he dee'd, twa year efter, in puirtith, lea'in twintie bairns, o thaim sieven wis pensioned bi the keeng o Spain.

Asides mony pentins in the Madrid gallery, the Ascension an St Joseph at Dresden, Perseus an Andromeda at Saunt Petersburg, an the ceil o the Villa Albani maun be mentiont amang his chief warks. As o 1911, Henry George Percy, 7t Duke o Northumberland, possessed a Haly Faimilie, an the colleges o Aw Sauls an Magdalen, at Oxford, possessed altar-pieces bi Mengs's haund.

In his writins, in the Spanish, Italian an German leids, Mengs haes pitten furth his eclectic theorie o airt, that treats perfection as attainable bi a weel-schemed combination o diverse excellences Greek design, wi the expression o Raphael, the chiaroscuro o Correggio, an the licht o Titian. His intimacy wi Johann Joachim Winckelmann that wrate constant tae his dictation haes enhanced his historical importance, for he furmed nae scholars, an the creetic maunna concur in Goethe's juidgment o Mengs in Winckelmann und sein Jahrhundert; he maun deplore that sae muckle lair shuid hae been allied tae a total want o ineetiative an want o invention, an embodied wi a strained an airtifeecial mainerism.

[edit] Warks (a walin)

Ascension (Dresden, Court Church), 1751/1766
St Joseph (Dresden, Court Church), 1751/1766
Charles III (Spain, Museo del Prado), 1761

[edit] Leiteratur

See Opere di Antonio Raffaello Mengs (Parma, 1780); Mengs Werke, übersetzt v. G. F. Prange (1786); Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst (1880); Bianconi, Elogio storico di Mengs (Milan, 1780); Woermann, Ismael und Raphael Mengs (Leipzig, 1893).

[This entry is foondit on an airticle frae the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.]