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 :. | self-Portrait (nn03) | Portrait of Richard Wilson | Self-portrait | the later Queen Maria Luisa of Spain | British painter |
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Ostade, Adriaen van
Dutch Baroque Era Painter, 1610-1685 Painter, draughtsman and etcher. According to Houbraken's rather unreliable biography, he was a pupil concurrently with Adriaen Brouwer of Frans Hals in Haarlem. Hals influenced him very little, whereas Brouwer, who was described as 'known far and wide' as early as 1627, had a decisive influence on the evolution of Adriaen van Ostade's always idiosyncratic portrayal of peasant life. The first documentary mention of Adriaen van Ostade as a painter is in 1632 (Schnackenburg, 1970). Most of his paintings are signed and dated, the earliest firmly dated example being the Peasants Playing Cards (1633; St Petersburg, Hermitage).
Cornelis van Poelenburch
(1594 - 12 August 1667) was a Dutch Golden Age landscape painter. Though his birthplace is unknown, a signed document survives in Utrecht where he is listed as six years old and the son of Simon van Poelenburch, a Catholic canon in Utrecht.He initially trained with Abraham Bloemaert, and his earliest signed paintings are from 1620.He traveled to Rome where he was influenced by Adam Elsheimer and became a founding member of the Bentvueghels. He counted a few cardinals under his patrons, and was called to England by Charles I of England, for whom he made small cabinet pieces. He returned to Utrecht where he later died just a few years after his old teacher Abraham Bloemaert.He painted mostly small landcapes with mythical or religious figures or passages, in a style that would later be evident in some of the works of Claude Lorraine. His "most important and successful" pupils were Daniël Vertangen, Dirck van der Lisse, François Verwilt, and Jan van Haensbergen. Arnold Houbraken claimed that his best pupil was Joan vander Lis from Breda (not Dirk vander Lis from The Hague). Houbraken then mentioned Vertangen, Verwilt, Warnard van Rysen from Bommel, and Willem van Steenree, a nephew. The RKD also mentions Laurens Barata.