Anton Raphael Mengs 安東·拉斐爾·門斯 (1728-1779) Neoclassicism Baroque German

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Anton Raphael Mengs (March 22, 1728[1] – June 29, 1779) was a German Bohemian painter, active in Rome, Madrid and Saxony, who became one of the precursors to Neoclassical painting.
Mengs was born in 1728 at Ústí nad Labem (German: Aussig) in Bohemia, the son of Ismael Mengs (da), a Danish painter who eventually established himself at Dresden. His elder sister, Therese Maron was also a painter, as was their younger sister Julia. In 1741 Mengs's father took him from Dresden to Rome.
In 1749 he was appointed first painter to Frederick Augustus, elector of Saxony, but this did not prevent him from continuing to spend much of his time in Rome. There he married Margarita Guazzi, who had sat for him as a model in 1748. He converted to Catholicism, and in 1754 he became director of the Vatican school of painting. His fresco painting of Parnassus at Villa Albani gained him a reputation as a master painter.
In 1749 Mengs accepted a commission from the Duke of Northumberland to make a copy, in oil on canvas, of Raphael's fresco The School of Athens for his London home. Executed in 1752–5, Mengs' painting is full-sized, but adapts the composition to a rectangular format, with some additional figures. It is now in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum.[2] Mengs died in Rome in June 1779 and was buried in the Roman Church of Santi Michele e Magno.
On two occasions he accepted invitations from Charles III of Spain to go to Madrid. There he produced some of his best work, most notably 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. After the completion of this work in 1777, Mengs returned to Rome, where he died two years later, in poor circumstances, leaving twenty children, seven of whom were pensioned by the king of Spain. His portraits and self-portraits recall an attention to detail and insight often lost in his grander paintings.
His closeness to Johann Joachim Winckelmann[3] has enhanced his historical importance. Mengs came to share Winckelmann's enthusiasm for classical antiquity, and worked to establish the dominance of Neoclassical painting. At the same time, however, the influence of the Roman Baroque remained strong in his work, particularly in his religious paintings. He would have fancied himself the first neoclassicist, while in fact he may be the last flicker of Baroque art. Rudolf Wittkower wrote: "In the last analysis, he is as much an end as a beginning".[4] In Winckelmann und sein Jahrhundert, Goethe regretted 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 had a well-known rivalry with the contemporary Italian painter Pompeo Batoni. He was also a friend of Giacomo Casanova. Casanova provides accounts of his personality and contemporary reputation through anecdotes in his Histoire de Ma Vie. Among his pupils in Italy were Anton von Maron, Antonio Maron (Vienna, 1731- Naples 1761).[5] His pupils in Spain included Agustín Esteve.
Besides numerous paintings in Madrid, the Ascension and St Joseph at Dresden, Perseus and Andromeda at Saint Petersburg, and the ceiling of the Villa Albani are among his chief works. In 1911, Henry George Percy, 7th Duke of Northumberland, possessed Mengs's work entitled Holy Family, and the colleges of All Souls and Magdalen, at Oxford, possessed altar-pieces by Mengs.
Theoretical writings:In his writings, in Spanish, Italian, and German, Mengs expressed an eclectic theory of art, seeing 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.
安東·拉斐爾·門斯（德語：Anton Raphael Mengs，1728年3月12日－1779年6月29日），德國畫家，新古典主義畫派先驅之一。
1728年，門斯出生於波希米亞拉貝河畔烏斯季。父親伊斯梅爾·門斯是丹麥畫家，在德勒斯登定居，1741年，他帶著兒子來到羅馬。
在羅馬，他為阿爾巴尼別墅創作的壁畫《詩壇》」為他贏得了聲譽。作為一個主畫家。1749年，他被任命為奧古斯特三世的首席畫家，但是他依然把大量時間花費在羅馬，在那裡他娶了曾在1748年擔任他的模特的瑪格麗塔·谷阿茲為妻，並放棄了新教的信仰。1754年，他成為梵蒂岡繪畫學校的主管。他曾兩次接受卡洛斯三世的召見，前往馬德里。在那裡，門斯創作了一些他最好的作品，特別是馬德里王宮宴會廳的天花板壁畫，主題是《圖拉真祝聖》和《榮譽聖殿》。在1777年完成這項工作後，門斯返回羅馬，兩年後在困境中去世，留下了20個孩子，其中7人由西班牙國王發放撫恤金。他的肖像畫和自畫像，洞察力豐富，注重細節，有時失於大氣。