Mengs, Anton Raphael

The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Mengs, Anton Raphael

 

Born Mar. 22, 1728, in Aussig, in present-day Ústì nad Labem, in Czechoslovakia; died June 29, 1779, in Rome. German painter and art theorist.

Mengs worked in Dresden, Rome, and Madrid. Under the influence of his friend J. J. Winckelmann, he adopted classicist principles both in his painting and theoretical works. Mengs’ works (the fresco Parnassus, 1761, Villa Albani, Rome) are marked by eclecticism, abstraction, and idealization. His drawings and portraits are particularly expressive (Self-portrait, Hermitage, Leningrad).

WORKS

Sämtliche hinterlassene Schriften, vols 1-2. Edited by G. Schilling, Bonn, 1843-44.
In Russian translation:
In Mastera iskusstva ob iskusstve, vol. 3. Moscow, 1967. Pages 459-67.

REFERENCE

Honisch, D. A. R. Mengs und die Bildform des Frühklassizismus. Berlin, 1965.

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979). © 2010 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.