MENGS, Anton Raphael

The two children portrayed here were the children of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, Leopold of Habsburg - who became Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire in 1790 - and Maria Luisa of Bourbon, daughter of Charles III. This commission might have come from the Spanish monarch, who wanted a portrait of his grandchildren, painted in Florence in 1770. Ferdinand (1769-1824), standing, is playing with the chain of the Order of the Golden Fleece on his chest, showing it to the viewer, while his sister (1770-1809), sitting on a chair-throne, is holding an ivory ring in her right hand.

After a forced separation brought about by religious wars, in the eighteenth century there again appears, in the person of Anton Raphael Megs, an artistic link between the Spanish monarchy and German art. For many years Mengs resided in Spain where he left a prominent impression. Many of his portraits are preserved in Spain (in the Prado, Madrid) - works from the time of Charles III, of Charles IV, of members of the court of Naples and of the Austrian Empire - and all evidence a refined technique and masterly transcription of faces and details.

This painting belongs to a series representing the portraits of the princes of Asturias.

Praised as one of the most important exponents of international Neoclassicism, Mengs here brings together two children of the Grand Duke of Tuscany Peter Leopold of Habsburg-Lorraine: Archduke Ferdinand and Archduchess Maria Anna.

As First Chamber Painter of the King of Spain Charles III of Bourbon, Mengs had the opportunity to immortalize the two children when he was allowed to come back to Italy to take care of his health on condition that he went to Florence to portray the Grand Duke’s family. During his Florentine sojourn (from June 1770 to January 1771), before leaving for Rome, Mengs succeeded in realizing all of the five commissioned portraits. However, maybe for a lack of time, the painter chose to depict Ferdinand and Maria Anna together in a double portrait.

Here the Habsburg-Lorraine archduchess is portrayed in a pose which is objectively impossible for a 10-month baby, realistically incapable of standing on her own feet by herself. Also to correct this incongruity Mengs left this first version unfinished, and replaced it with the Prado’s final version. Yet, though unfinished, the painting is noteworthy for its extraordinary modern composition, its descriptive unaffectedness, the natural poses of the sitters and its beautiful explosive palette; all qualities which are no longer distinguishable in the Madrid final version curbed by the rules of court ceremony and the formal dress codes the Infants had to respect.

“Ecce Homo” (“Behold the man”) were the words Pilate addressed to the Jews after Christ had been whipped by the soldiers. In this work Mengs depicts Jesus shortly after having been proclaimed the King of the Jews, wearing the crown of thorns and carrying a rod as a sceptre. The blood that is beginning to dry on his right shoulder reveals the marks of the whiplashes, although the artist has preferred to focus on the psychological condition of Christ rather than on the dramatic quality of the scene. Tired and humiliated, the figure shows signs of deep suffering. Conceived as a pious image, this picture invites pity by presenting Jesus Christ as a human being, despite the characteristic idealised distance of Neoclassicism.

Mengs probably depicted this Ecce Homo towards the end of his life, after returning to Rome in 1777.

Mengs spent his last 15 years in Spain where he became the favourite painter of King Charles III. The king commissioned the artist to execute the frescoes of the new Royal Palace and to portray the important persons belonging to the Court.

Ferdinand I (1751-1825) king of the Two Sicilies (1816-25) who earlier (1759-1806), as Ferdinand IV of Naples, led his kingdom in its fight against the French Revolution and its liberal ideas. A relatively weak and somewhat inept ruler, he was greatly influenced by his wife, Maria Carolina of Austria, who furthered the policy of her favourite adviser, the Englishman Sir John Acton.

Ferdinand became king of Naples as a boy when his father ascended the Spanish throne (1759) as Charles III. A regency ruled during Ferdinand’s minority and continued the liberal reforms of the previous king. In 1767 Ferdinand reached his majority, and his marriage in 1768 to Maria Carolina signalled a reversal of this policy. The birth of a male heir gave Maria Carolina the right, according to the marriage contract, to enter the council of state (1777). She brought about the downfall of the former regent Bernardo Tanucci and engaged Naples in the Austro-English coalition against the French Revolution in 1793.

Ferdinand, encouraged by the arrival of the British fleet of Admiral Horatio Nelson, attacked the French-supported Roman republic in 1798. On December 21 of that year, however, the French invaded Naples, declaring it the Parthenopean Republic, and Ferdinand fled to Sicily. The Republic was overthrown in June 1799, and Ferdinand returned to Naples, where he put to death the Republic’s supporters, violating the terms of their surrender.

In 1806 Napoleon’s army captured Naples, forcing Ferdinand’s flight to Sicily, where, yielding to British pressure to mitigate his absolutist rule, he removed Maria Carolina from the court, appointed his son Francis as regent, and granted the Sicilians a constitution. With the fall of Napoleon, he returned to Naples as Ferdinand I of the united kingdom of the Two Sicilies (December 1816). His renewal of absolute rule led to the constitutionalist uprising of 1820, which forced Ferdinand to grant a constitution. Having ceded power again to his son Francis, Ferdinand, under the pretext of protecting the new constitution, obtained his parliament’s permission to attend the Congress of Laibach early in 1821. Once there, he won the aid of Austria, which overthrew Naples’ constitutional government in March. The subsequent reprisals against the constitutionalists were his last important official acts before his sudden death.

A meticulous painter, Mengs admired the oeuvre of 16th-century Italian artists such as Raphael and Correggio, whom he considered to be models of perfection both as regards composition and style. Emulating their masterpieces.

Maria Luisa (1751-1819) was the daughter of Philip, Duke of Parma. She married her first cousin Charles IV, King of Spain in 1765 and became Princess of Asturia. The couple had fourteen children, six of which survived into adulthood.

Maria Luisa of Parma was the wife of Charles IV, King of Spain (1788-1808) during the turbulent period of the French Revolution. Lacking qualities of leadership himself, Charles entrusted the government (1792) to Manuel de Godoy, a prot�g� (and lover) of the queen, Maria Luisa.

The unfinished painting, showing the young princess at the age of 15, is a study, the final painting is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

The figures of this Neoclassical composition, a masterwork of the artist, are based on examples from Antiquity such as the Belvedere Apollo.

The scene of a maiden saved at the last moment from being devoured by a monster is devoid of drama and reflects the breadth of the artist’s knowledge more than his interest in the myth’s content.

The portrait of Clement XIII Rezzonico was painted between July and December 1758 in the months immediately after the election of Cardinal Carlo Rezzonico to the papal seat on 16 July. There is evidence that the painting was originally intended for the family’s Venetian palazzo, but that shortly after it was completed it was moved to Rome where the pope’s nephew, Cardinal Abbondio Rezzonico, lived.

Johann Winckelmann is an archaeologist and an art historian who is regarded as the father of modern archaeology because of his studies of the excavations of Pompeii and Herculaneum in Italy.

He wrote the formative essay, Gedanken �ber die Nachahmung der griechischen Werke in der Malerei und Bildhauerkunst (1755; Reflections on the Painting and Sculpture of the Greeks, 1765), in which he maintained, ‘The only way for us to become great, or even inimitable if possible, is to imitate the Greeks.’ His essay became a manifesto of the Greek ideal in education and art and was soon translated into several languages. His general Geschichte der Kunst des Altertums (1764; History of the Art of Antiquity) is virtually the first work to define in ancient art an organic development of growth, maturity, and decline.

Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717-1768) was a German art historian and archaeologist, a pioneering Hellenist who first articulated the difference between Greek, Greco-Roman and Roman art. He was one of the founders of scientific archaeology and first applied the categories of style on a large, systematic basis to the history of art. Many consider him the father of the discipline of art history. His influence was decisive on the rise of the neoclassical movement during the late eighteenth century. His writings influenced not only a new science of archaeology and art history but Western painting, sculpture, literature and even philosophy. Winckelmann’s History of Ancient Art (1764) is a classic book of European literature.

Anton Raphael Mengs was a follower of Winckelmann’s ideas.

The sitter of this portrait is the famous singer Domenico Annibali (1705-1779) from Macerata, in the Marches, who was summoned to the court of Dresden, as well as to London and Rome. He is depicted as if he were an important member of the court, and the magnificence of his proud pose and sumptuous clothes are in the manner of the official portraits of the European courts around the middle of the 18th century. His face appears to be lively and intelligent, and is painted in a style resembling that of the contemporary portraits by Pompeo Batoni.

The painting is signed and dated 1750.

This self-portrait, showing the influence of Venetian painting, was executed by the young artist at the age of 16.

This vigorous self-portrait was painted in Rome in 1779, the year of the artist’s death.

This painting is a reduced version of a larger painting (208 x 153 cm) now in The Hermitage, Saint Petersburg.

The artist used a single colour, gray, and used the various shades of this colour to create a total pictorial illusion.

This painting was commissioned from Mengs by the 3rd Earl Cowper, before the artist’s departure from Rome to Spain in August 1761. The painting was probably completed in Spain in 1763.

Anton Raphael Mengs painted this picture in 1752 in Rome, and it led to his admittance to the Accademia di San Luca. Later he tackled the subject on numerous occasions, and in very different ways. In this version elegance and an expression of great sensitivity are combined with reminiscences of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century painting, along with echoes of Classicism in the drapery and the landscape.

The depiction of Mary Magdalene as a penitent does not appear in the Bible. It was not until the twelfth century that the legend arose of how she withdrew to a cave in Sainte-Baume in Provence in order to do penance after a life of sin.