Anton Raphael Mengs

Anton Raphael Mengs (1728–1779) was a German painter and art theorist whose history paintings and portraits joined classical models with a renewed ideal of artistic design.

Connect

Parnassus (Mengs): A fresco by Mengs at the Villa Albani in Rome, depicting Apollo and the Muses on Mount Parnassus. This fresco made Mengs’s classicizing style a landmark of the Villa Albani’s decoration.
Thoughts on the Imitation of Greek Works in Painting and Sculpture: Mengs’s 1755 treatise arguing that Greek art exemplified an ideal beauty artists should study and imitate. It sets out the principles behind his preference for classical models.
Johann Joachim Winckelmann: A German art historian whose writings on ancient Greek art helped shape eighteenth-century Neoclassicism. Winckelmann and Mengs shared a Roman circle and influential ideas about Greek art.
Ismaël Mengs: A Danish-born painter who settled in Saxony and trained his son Anton Raphael Mengs. His father’s instruction established Mengs’s early discipline in drawing and painting.
Neoclassical painting: Painting that revives the forms, subjects, and ideals associated with ancient Greek and Roman art. Mengs’s history paintings helped define this strand of the classical revival.
The Apotheosis of Hercules: A ceiling fresco by Mengs in the gallery of the Villa Albani in Rome, showing Hercules among the gods. Its illusionistic ceiling and antique subject reveal Mengs’s command of monumental decoration.
Imitation of the ancients: An artistic practice of studying and adapting forms, subjects, and principles from ancient Greek and Roman art. Mengs treated disciplined study of antiquity as a route to artistic excellence.
Raphael: An Italian Renaissance painter and architect celebrated for balanced compositions and idealized figures. Mengs treated Raphael as a model, while his own work adapted Renaissance ideals to a new age.
Dresden: A German city that became a major center of court art and collecting under the Saxon rulers. Mengs grew up in Dresden amid the collections and institutions of the Saxon court.
History painting: A genre depicting religious, historical, mythological, or literary events, traditionally ranked above portraiture and still life. Mengs used this prestigious genre to express classical ideals and moral subjects.