'', 1774 (on display at the
Walker Art Gallery,
Liverpool) His portraits and self-portraits show an attention to detail and insight often lost in his grander paintings. His closeness to
Johann Joachim Winckelmann has enhanced his historical importance. Mengs came to share Winckelmann's enthusiasm for classical antiquity, and worked to establish the dominance of Neoclassical painting over the then popular Rococo style. At the same time, however, the influence of the Roman Baroque remained strong in his work, particularly in his religious paintings. He would have fancied himself the first neoclassicist, while, in fact, he may be the last flicker of Baroque art.
Rudolf Wittkower wrote: "In the last analysis, he is as much an end as a beginning".
Goethe regretted that "so much learning should have been allied to a total want of initiative and poverty of invention, and embodied with a strained and artificial mannerism." '' (1765–1769), Museo Camón Aznar Mengs had a well-known rivalry with the contemporary Italian painter
Pompeo Batoni. He was also a friend of
Giacomo Casanova. Casanova provides accounts of his personality and contemporary reputation through anecdotes in his
Histoire de ma vie. Among his pupils in Italy were
Anton von Maron (Antonio Maron; (Vienna, 1731- Naples, 1761). His pupils in Spain included
Agustín Esteve,
Francisco Bayeu and
Mariano Salvador Maella. Besides numerous paintings in
Madrid, the
Ascension and
St Joseph at Dresden,
Perseus and Andromeda at
Saint Petersburg, and the ceiling of the Villa Albani are among his chief works. Another altar-piece was installed in
Magdalen College, Oxford.
Theoretical writings Mengs wrote about art in Spanish,
Italian, and German. His friendship with Winckelmann notwithstanding, Mengs was little influenced by Winckelmann's ideas; the basis of his extensive writings on art is to be found in the traditional theories that go back to
Bellori. He reveals an eclectic theory of art that sees perfection as attainable through a well-balanced fusion of diverse excellences: Greek design combined with the expression of
Raphael, the
chiaroscuro of
Correggio, and the colour of
Titian. == Selected works ==