Anton Raphael Mengs, son of Ismael Israel Mengs (1688–1764), a Dresden court painter who had converted to Protestantism, was a pioneer of the neoclassical style. In his time, he was celebrated as the greatest living painter. Among Mengs’s most notable works are the ceiling fresco Parnassus with Apollo and the Muses (1759) in the Villa Albani in Rome and the frescoes he painted for Charles III at the Palacio Real in Madrid (1762–1769 and 1774–1775). Mengs published a number of volumes on art, including the influential handbook for painters Thoughts on Beauty and Taste in Painting (1762).
Isabel María Parreño Arce y Valdés (1759–1822), the Marquesa de Llano, had her portrait painted by Anton Raphael Mengs, in Parma, Italy, where her husband was the ambassador from Spain. At the time…
Bezem (d. 2018)’s art, which once gave expression to his immigration to Palestine, the loss of his parents in the Holocaust, and his sense of rebirth in Israel, was dramatically transformed after his…
William Zorach created Spirit of the Sea at the request of the City of Bath, which wanted a fountain for a city park. The sculpture is similar to others in his oeuvre in that it consists of a figure…