MENGS, ANTON RAPHAEL. - Painter, born at Aussig in Bohemia on 22 March 1728, died in Rome on 29 June 1779. Son of Ismaele, also a painter, he was still a boy when his father took him to Rome. There, between 1741 and 1744, he studied under M. Benefial and S. Conca, but he was especially interested in the works of Raphael.
Returning to his homeland, Dresden, he achieved great success there for his exceptional skill as a portraitist; nevertheless, he soon wished to return to Rome, where he was again in 1746. There, having converted to Catholicism (he was Jewish) and married a Roman woman, he often portrayed her, from 1749 onward, with the attributes of the Madonna in compositions depicting the Holy Family. A highly sought-after painter and renowned portraitist, Mengs carried out most of his activity in Rome, despite frequent trips abroad; in 1755 he met Winckelmann, whose aesthetic theories partly coincided with his own in their tendency toward the search for an ideal beauty pursued through the selection of models drawn, according to Mengs, from the works of the great painters of the past: above all Raphael, Correggio, Titian, and Michelangelo. These ideas, derived from Bellori and thus only partly coinciding with those of the pure neoclassicists, who located beauty in the great models of classical antiquity, Mengs developed in numerous writings and testified in his paintings, such as, between 1757–58, the ceiling of the church of S. Eusebio in Rome and, in 1761, the fresco depicting Parnassus in the villa of Cardinal Albani. In 1761 Mengs was also in Naples and then in Madrid to paint at the royal court and reorganize the Academy. Returning to Rome and elected prince of the Accademia di S. Luca, in 1772 he decorated the Sala dei papiri in the Vatican Library. In 1773 he was again in Madrid, but failing health forced him to return to Rome, where he died six years later. Among his works, some portraits of great value still inclined toward the most graceful aspects of the eighteenth century, are found in major Italian and foreign collections.