“Portrait of an Elegant Lady” from the collection of Collections of the Von Schmidt Family Trust

“Portrait of an Elegant Lady”, 1775

Oil On Canvas

26 x 21.25 in (66.04 x 53.98 cm)

Inv: 1135 Von Schmidt Famil...

European painter Antone Raffael Mengs painted this in 1775 while in Germany. The 18th Century Oil on canvas in encased in a later era frame. Unsigned. This head and shoulders portrait of a wealthy lady wearing pearls reflects the style and elegance of the sitter in this era. The painting is in Fair condition; having been lined, restretched, restored.

Mengs portraits and self-portraits show an attention to detail and insight particularly when the subject is a woman in the head and shoulders style. This attention to the essence of the subject is 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.

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From Collections of the Von Schmidt Family Trust

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Additional Details

Additional Artworks

“Mother and Child”, 1997

“French Noblewoman Louise Francois de Bourbon”, 1692

“The Marriage of the Virgin”, 1621

“Winter Walk”

Les Melules en Hiver

Le Chateaunier du Mont Aigu

“The Martyrdom of St. Stephen”, 17th Century

‘Mary Magdalene in Ecstasy”, 1575-1616