Mengs - Archduke Ferdinand and Archduchess Maria Anna of Austria - Uffizi

Anton Raphael Mengs (1728–1779), Bohemian painter who was perhaps the leading artist of early Neoclassicism. Mengs studied under his father in Dresden, Saxony, and then in Rome. He became painter to the Saxon court in Dresden in 1745 and executed a large number of portraits, most in brightly coloured pastels. Mengs returned to Rome in the early 1750s, and about 1755 he became a close friend of the German archaeologist and art critic J.J. Winckelmann. He came to share Winckelmann’s enthusiasm for classical antiquity, and, upon its completion in 1761, his fresco Parnassus at the Villa Albani in Rome created a sensation and helped establish the ascendancy of Neoclassical painting. Mengs also continued to paint portraits during this period, competing with Pompeo Batoni, the leading Rococo portraitist of the Roman school.