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Presented almost half-length with his face turned to the viewer, Mengs wears a velvet gown and holds the tools of his trade. The panel was painted shortly after the artist’s arrival in Spain and uses a distinctive, sketchy technique that allows the underlayer of priming to show through. The artist reappears in the Prado’s Adoration of the Shepherds (P-2204).
This work recalls the philosophers and Apostles by the Baroque painter José de Ribera, albeit refining their pictorial language from the more restrained perspective of Neo-classicism. Saint Peter points to the heavens with his right hand, a gesture that encourages a reflection on the divine mysteries and also refers to his eloquence as an orator.
This is a sketch for a no-longer extant painting on canvas intended to decorate a ceiling in a building of the imperial court of Russia, whose memory is preserved in an engraving made by Giambattista´s youngest son Lorenzo. The engraving forms a set with another three, two of which were also made by Lorenzo, on the basis of original works by his father, as part of the same commission. The en
Una inscripción en su reverso vincula este óleo sobre cobre de pequeñas dimensiones con la pintora Caterina Cherubini Preciado, esposa del también pintor Francisco Preciado de la Vega desde 1750 y junto a él residente en Roma durante la segunda mitad del siglo XVIII.Caterina fue hija, como recuerda Urrea, de Giuseppe Cherubini, nacido a su vez de Giovanni Valentino Cherubini, ambos establecidos en
Mounted on a white steed and flanked by an angel bearing a flag, Saint James gallops over a multitude of fallen Moors and horses. The battle scene occupies a rocky landscape in the middle ground. This canvas is a sketch for the elliptical dome at the entrance to the Royal Palace’s chapel and was painted by Giaquinto between 1756 and 1757. The canvas and its corresponding fresco are clearly derived
This work and its pair, A Saxon Villager Driving a Barrel with a Wheelbarrow (P2271), may have been gifts sent by the Elector of Saxony, Augustus III, to his daughter, Queen Maria Amalia, and his son-in-law, Charles of Bourbon. This eighteenth-century taste for popular scenes is reflected in several of the monarch’s commissions, such as those for the tapestries of José del Castillo, Bayeu a
Standing on clouds at the center of the composition, Moses points toward the sunbeams shining down from the sky. Beneath him, Abraham and Isaac are accompanied by the sacrificial lamb. To the left of the composition, Saint Laurence and Saint Steven await the palm frond of martyrdom carried by angels; and to the right, we see the strong women of the Bible and King David.This composition belongs to
This canvas is an example of the 18th-century fascination with popular costumes and occupations. Charles III himself fostered the publication of prints on these subjects, both in Naples and in Spain, in order to draw attention to the diversity of his subjects. Like its pair, A Saxon Peasant Villager in her Kitchen (P2270), it was a gift of the Elector of Saxony, Augustus III, to his daughter Maria
A frontal view of the Queen. She sits, wearing a red silk dress with white sleeves and bonnet. Her right arm rests very naturally on a table, while her left holds a book. She is marking one of the pages with her finger as though she had just interrupted her reading. This is quite common in female portraits. Maria Amalia was born to Friedrich Augustus III, King of Poland and elector of Saxony; and
This is a sketch of the fresco that Corrado Giaquinto painted in the former stairway at the Madrid’s Royal Palace, which is now the Hall of Columns. That fresco, his last work at the Royal Palace, is undoubtedly one of the finest paintings from Giaquinto’s Spanish period.He concluded it in 1762, so the sketch presented here must have been made slightly earlier. At the top is the figure of Apollo,
The scene depicts a group of naked young women being surprised by a male who violently thrusts aside the reeds behind which they are concealed, while some cupids retreat in fear. The work illustrates a classical theme taken from Ovid´s Metamorphoses that appears to narrate the culminating moment in the mythical story of the god Pan and Syrinx, a wood nymph of Arcadia, which takes place by th
Corrado Giaquinto had frequent contacts with Spain as of 1735 or earlier. But the death of Jacopo Amigoni in 1752 led to his being summoned to Madrid the next year. During his stay in the Spanish Court, he earned the highest honors given to a painter in that era. He became First Painter to the Court in August 1753 and director of the Academy of San Fernando that December. His main mission was the
Daughter of the Empress María Teresa Habsburg and the Emperor Francisco I of Lorena, María Carolina Habsburg-Lorena (Vienna, 1752-1814) married Ferdinand IV of Naples in 1768, and bore seventeen children. According to Benedetto Croce, Napoleon called her “the only man in the kingdom of Naples”. She is shown here sumptuously dressed and bejeweled, against a landscape of distant trees
This portrait of Charles IV as the Prince of Asturias has as its pendant a portrait of his wife, María Luisa of Parma, also in the Museo del Prado (P2189). Anton Raphael Mengs had come to Spain in 1761 at the invitation of Charles III in order to serve as pintor de camára, or court painter, the most prestigious appointment for an artist in the service of the king. He probably produce
Corrado Giaquinto had frequent contacts with Spain as of 1735 or earlier. But the death of Jacopo Amigoni in 1752 led to his being summoned to Madrid the next year. During his stay in the Spanish Court, he earned the highest honors given to a painter in that era. He became First Painter to the Court in August 1753 and director of the Academy of San Fernando that December. His main mission was the
A Pietà made by this Neapolitan painter during his stay in Madrid (1753-1763). The group of Christ and the angel holding him corresponds to the fresco of the Holy Trinity in the chapel at Madrid’s Royal Palace, of which the Museo del Prado has a presentation sketch (P03204). A preparatory drawing of the figure of Christ is at the Museo di San Martino in Naples. Giaquinto had already used th
A successful interpreter of the Neo-classical style, Angelica Kauffmann here offers an elegant image of the sitter, Anna Escher von Muralt (1767 -1830), who belonged to a prominent Swiss family. The subject is depicted sitting in a wooded spot, wearing a fashionable gown of classical inspiration. A circular temple in the background completes this idealised evocation of the ancient world.
Neoclassical painter Anton Raphael Mengs spent some eleven years in Spain -from 1761 to 1769, and again from 1774 to 1777- working primarily on the decoration of Madrid’s Royal Palace for King Charles III. For the king’s bedroom, Mengs made a series of easel paintings on the Passion of Christ -most importantly, Descent from the Cross, Patrimonio Nacional, on permanent loan to the Museu Nacional d’
