Madrid,
If an artist could not imagine any other possible destiny than painting, that is Anton Raphael Mengs: because his first training, in Dresden and Rome, took place under the auspices of his father, the court painter Ismael Mengs; and because from him it received that double name that paid tribute to Correggio and Raphael of Urbino. He soon entered the electoral court of Saxony and then the pontifical court of Rome and the support of fundamental figures such as Cardinal Alessandro Albani or King Charles III allowed him to establish himself as one of the most influential authors in 18th century European culture and also as one of the fathers of neoclassicism, the new, serene and balanced art that put an end to baroque excesses and the repetitive Rococo language and which, for those same reasons, has hardly been in our time. vindicated. Nor did Mengs, confident in his abilities, unfriendly to national schools and a man with a bad personality, make the ground easy for those who let themselves be carried away by the charme staff.
His moment, in any case, has arrived: the Prado Museum already offers him an anthology, curated by Andrés Úbeda and Javier Jordán, which reminds us that the competition and mutual encouragement between Mengs and Tiépolo contributed to making Madrid a center of world art in the 1760s (perhaps the only time in which it acquired that place) and that the bohemian artist – only by origin – maintained, throughout his entire career, an extraordinary defense of the beautiful ideal: of the correspondence between formal perfection and that beauty, which he found fundamentally in Greek antiquity and in Raphael. The first was in its time much less known than the Roman one, hence the originality of its recovery; The second interested him fundamentally as a defender of classicism a couple of centuries before him.
Despite his relevance in the Age of Enlightenment, Mengs is a painter relatively undiscovered in art history manuals: his mention is essential, but delving into his work has been much rarer. Continuously and seamlessly betting, as a painter and as a theorist, on that classicist option that would soon be questioned did not work in his favor in the field of his critical reception.
The retrospective that the Prado now dedicates to him reflects the evident influence on his production of the masters of the past and the multiple facets of his career: chamber painter, muralist and intellectual, he carried out paintings, drawings, engravings, studies on paper and pieces of decorative arts, without forgetting his theoretical corpus. There are nearly 150 pieces collected, most of them from international institutions and private collections, and they are structured into a dozen chronological and thematic sections, highlighting those focused on the support he received from the aforementioned Charles III and his ties with Winckelmann, the archaeologist and scholar responsible for our current vision of ancient art.
His work cannot be understood without understanding the rich collections to which he had early access thanks to his father and his first patrons: those from Saxony and those of classical antiquities and Renaissance and Baroque pieces gathered in Rome. Demanding and rigorous with all his children, but especially with Anton Raphael, Ismael Mengs moved with his family to Rome specifically so that the young man could learn in the Vatican and to attend Marco Benefial’s academy. Returning to Dresden, a portrait by Domenico Annibali opened the doors of the Saxon court, where he would be consolidated by other pastel works of that genre, among them that of Augustus III, king of Poland and elector of Saxony. In 1751 he became the first court painter and was commissioned to paint an Ascension for the main altar of the (Catholic) Cathedral of the Holy Trinity.
Rafael also comes out to meet us at the start of the exhibition. In his admiration for the author of The school of Athens He was not the original Mengs (the Carracci, Domenichino, Guido Reni, Andrea Sacchi and Carlo Maratti praised his prestige), but his audacity was greater than that of almost everyone when trying to measure himself against him: so much so that in his time he was considered disrespectful. We will find the clearest manifestation of this intention when confronting its Lamentation over dead Christ with Amazement of Sicily from Italian.
Aside from the genius of elegance, the stimuli that Mengs offered bel paese There were many: direct contact with the ruins, Annibale Carracci, clients like the Pope or the Grand Tour travelers or… the aforementioned Winckelmann, a German who almost became Italian by vocation and with whom he was a friend; both found, more or less simultaneously, a very special form of beauty in classical statues. Convinced of the superiority of Greek art, they found, above all, in his male sculptures that concept of ideal beauty that our artist wanted to bring to his canvases, replicating his canon of perfection.
That deep friendship between the two did not end because of a personal disagreement, but, precisely, because of a change. A false one, supposedly old and found in 1760, which actually had Mengs as its author: it is Jupiter and Ganymede and he carried it out, apparently, to harm Winckelmann’s prestige when he presented it as true – as he did with glowing praise of the composition. It is unknown exactly why the painter behaved this way: perhaps he sought to claim his influence on the theories illuminated by the archaeologist.
In reality, when it came to vindicating himself, Mengs was on his own: he expressed his artistic thoughts in some essays. And he also had the great support of friends such as José Nicolás de Azara, who was responsible for his bust being displayed in the Pantheon in Rome, his works being published in Italian and Spanish (and for them being widely republished and translated).
The chapter focused on Mengs’ arrival in Madrid occupies the heart of the exhibition. He was commissioned to take part in the decoration of the new Royal Palace and, after his mural works, came his portraits: those of Charles III in full length, different members of the royal family and the court; Among them, the one who would become Marchioness of Llano, Isabel Parreño, stands out. Special attention must be paid to the former, given that, in the hierarchy established by Mengs himself, the fresco was above oil painting due to its durability.
He increasingly used the dry painting technique and painted the vault of the Aranjuez theater completely in tempera. However, his methods for achieving their polished appearance proved to be entirely unstable and many of his works of this type have not survived. Among those that are preserved, the Roman fresco of the Parnassusa technical and formal prodigy compared to others immediately preceding it and an emblem of its classicity due to the arrangement of the figures in a frieze and on the same plane, integrating balanced groups, and for its saturated and luminous tones.
The exhibition culminates with its religious production, for the Royal Palace and for the private devotion of the family of Carlos III (the monarch’s bedroom was allocated Lamentation over dead Christ and The Eternal Fatherwhile more pleasant themes were reserved for his oratory and his chamber, such as Birth of Jesusthe Adoration of the shepherds and the Annunciation). Also reviewing the importance of his legacy: he contributed to turning classical beauty into an axis of study and debate and a source of inspiration for authors such as David (retrospective at the Louvre) or Canova. Even Goya came to pay attention, with his hand, to classical statuary.
“Antonio Raphael Mengs (1728-1779)”
PRADO MUSEUM
Paseo del Prado, s/n
Madrid
From November 25, 2025 to March 1, 2026
