Anton Raphael Mengs

Mengs’s connections with the monarchs of Europe go back to 1749, when he was appointed court painter to the King of Saxony, who resided in Mengs’s home city of Dresden. The king’s financial problems, however, soon led to his employment being suspended. In 1752 he travelled to Italy, where he later came to the attention of the Spanish king Charles III, who took him into his court in 1761. In Madrid Mengs was given the task of breathing new life into Spanish art, and for a decade he supervised the large-scale decoration of the royal palaces. In 1769 health problems forced him to return to Rome, but 1773 found him back in Spain, where he created one of the finest works of his life, the fresco The Apotheosis of Trajan (a detail is pictured) covering the ceiling of the royal palace. His health intervened again, however, and in 1777 he returned to Rome, where he spent the two years remaining until his death. Besides his prolific creative work, Mengs was the father of twenty children, although none of them followed in his footsteps, since he firmly talked them out of it.

From the page of Adoration of the Shepherds