Portrait of Francesco Bartolozzi

Anton Raphael Mengs

Basic information

ID: Ж-859
Author: Anton Raphael Mengs
Name: Portrait of Francesco Bartolozzi
Date of creation: 1770s
Technique: oil painting
Material: canvas oil
Dimensions (height x width, cm): 59 x 48

Additionally

Type: painting
Genre: portraiture
Plot: Portrait
Provenance: the Lubomirski collection
Exposition: Potocki Palace

Information about author

Author: Anton Raphael Mengs
Artist's lifetime: 1728–1779
Country: Germany
Biography: Anton Raphael Mengs (1728–1779) was a German Neoclassical artist. He was the son of Ismael Mengs, a Saxon court painter and an ardent admirer of Raphael's creative work. The artist's interest in ancient and Renaissance art and the incorporation of their principles into the artistic style of the master were facilitated by his father's aesthetic priorities, travels to Rome, Florence, and Venice, as well as the painter's acquaintance (1755) and close communication with Johann Joachim Winckelmann, a German art historian and "ideologist" of Neoclassicism, who called Anton Raphael Mengs "the most outstanding artist of his time". The painter gained worldwide fame during his lifetime, and his contemporaries regarded him as the "new Raphael". The master was a member of art academies in Rome, Florence, Bologna, Genoa, Venice, Augsburg, and Madrid and a court painter of the kings of Saxony, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and King Charles IV of Naples. The book "Reflections on Beauty and Taste" by Anton Raphael Mengs was used as a textbook in art academies. A feature of the figurative and plastic concept of the artist's work was the correlation of his aesthetic views, the cornerstone of which was the rejection of the capriciousness and decorative and plastic excessiveness of the Rococo, the return to the "classical norms" of the "grand style", the combination of the artistic experience of Antiquity with the achievements of Raphael, Titian, and Antonio da Correggio, and the imitation of outstanding masters of the past as the only way to achieve "ideal beauty" that resulted from the deliberate selection of the best in "nature". The distinguishing features of the creative practice of Anton Raphael Mengs, known primarily as a brilliant portraitist, were his desire for the beauty of forms, adherence to the exact rules of composition, the laws of chiaroscuro, and specific oil painting techniques. The artist considered himself the first Neoclassicist and, at the same time, was one of the last masters of the Baroque era, the solemnity of which he combined with the reproduction of individual unique features. "He is as much an end as a beginning," wrote the British art historian Rudolf Wittkower about Anton Raphael Mengs.

Object description

The "Portrait of Francesco Bartolozzi" was created by Anton Raphael Mengs (1728–1779), a German Neoclassical artist. The authorship of the work is confirmed by the attribution preserved since the times of Lukasz Dabski, whose collection the work originally belonged to, and the specialists of the State Hermitage who authenticated the canvas in the 1960s. The virtuosity and freedom of painting style, free arrangement of the figure in space, the informality of composition while maintaining clear architectonics, the rational combination of dynamics and balance, representativeness and reproduction of the momentary psychological state and individual characteristics indicate that the painting from the collection of Borys Voznytskyi Lviv National Art Gallery was created by Anton Raphael Mengs. The deep, warm, and rich colour of the canvas associates it with the other attributed works by the artist. The chamber and sublime interpretation of the image is prompted by the portrayed character of Francesco Bartolozzi (1727–1815), the Italian master of watercolour miniatures and reproduction engravings, who, after studying in the engraving workshops of Florence, Rome, and Venice, in 1764 moved to London, where he became a virtuoso in the so-called dotted technique. The brush in Francesco Bartolozzi's hand emphasises his belonging to the art world.

Portrayed person