The great exhibitions of the Museo del Prado can be explained on their own but from the cartel at the entrance to Jerónimos. But Antonio Rafael Mengues commissioned a basic question-and-answer show, admitted Andrés Úbeda de los Cobos, head of the Goya XVIII collection and a curator at a museum that simply calls the protagonist, his name assigned to the drought. First things first, declaration of intent. Why was this accomplished?, why was it important?, and why is it worth this space now? The expert emphasized that the painter who was key to the birth of neoclassicism and one of the most influential artists of the 18th century, suffered from a lack of clarity in art history books that had long been forgotten among academics and the general public. Therefore, they say from the Prado, they will organize a demonstration around his character – from three sides – to remember that despite his bad character and dogmatism in enforcing the law of pictorial beauty, his character is worth recovering.
Meng’s life was marked from his birth by the character of his priest. “The name that imposes on you can define everything,” Miguel Valomir, director of the museum, said at the presentation this month, recalling that the creator had the names of Antonio Allegri Correggio and Rafael d’Urbino, two of the great painters of the Italian Renaissance. From that moment on, as told in the ten chapters covered by the museum in 159 Objects, an accomplished becoming was built between the demands and the high level of expectations set by his predecessor, and which he himself imposed. “The way he defined beauty and formal perfection, and his style, made him an obsessive painter,” Úbeda de los Cobos explained. “He felt that his labors were never finished, and he continued to despair, always dissatisfied.”
An example of this is that Javier Jordaens de Oris, another commissioner and preserver of 18th-century painting for the national heritage, also pointed in his semi-transparent brushstrokes, allowing him to return again and again to the same objects to achieve the effect he wanted. This is the one that finished its work with enamel and which now shines in the Prado.
Mengs developed his career between Dresden, Rome and Madrid at a time when what was known as virtuous competition governed the work of artists from European courts. This means that the Kings put large sums of money on the table to work with top artists. Once the offer was accepted, the kings provoked the fiercest and fiercest fights between the painters. Some toxic dynamics, prominently masculine, with the ultimate goal of being able to show off their best artwork to the rest of the royalty. “Competition and efficiency are exceptional drivers for promoting talent in the arts,” Valomir said.
In the finished case, Carlos III ended up painting in the Royal Palace, wall to wall, with Tiepolo, at a moment, during the eighteenth century, when Madrid was finally recognized as a pictorial capital on the European circuit. “It was the moon and the sun,” the Prado director explained. Valomir recalls that there are no documents proving how the king contributed to the realization of Meng’s talent on the basis of pressure, and perhaps lies about his colleague’s work, but there is a long tradition of mastering the technique among kings and popes.
If this situation aggravated his personality, the way he upheld the foundations of neoclassicism did not help him to form friendships among his peers. “I decided to radically change the foundations of European painting by placing classical sculpture and the traditions of the ancient world at its center,” the commissioner said. “At that time, Europeans did not travel to Greece and, therefore, their mission lacked practical reality. But he said that the classical world created absolute beauty, and therefore contemporary painters of the time could only imitate it.” Another thing: whoever did not know this had absolute contempt for him.
That is why he discredited the national schools in the places where he worked. In Spain, he rejected the works of Murillo and Velasquez, whom he considered to be good painters, but whom he considered ignorant and did not follow his assumptions. “The painting was very intense and wanted everyone to paint with the same belief as it, and for this reason it generated conflicts in its surroundings,” Úbeda de los Cobos noted.
I have only a great ally in this missionary mission with Greek classics. The German archaeologist Johann Joachim Winckelmann opened his eyes to this concept of beauty to be found in ancient statues. Some of these objects on display at the Prado form part of Mengs’ personal collection and sit alongside his works to understand his way of drawing bodies and the expressions of his characters.
From 1755, his colleagues tried to impose the “technical superiority of Greek art” that the painter had mastered from design, in the exhibition that unfolds 81 and which demonstrates his obsession with this technique. Five years later, this alliance that changed the principles of European painting dissolved like sugar. Mengs faked a painting to harm the expert. There are several theories throughout history that have tried to explain this betrayal, and the purest explanation for it is one of them. The artist cannot feel adequately recognized by Winckelmann in his writings, if it is read on exhibition cards.
“Your competitor for mayor has always been history,” Úbeda de los Cobos added, to finish drawing a picture of Mengs. The artist lived permanently and directly with Rafael d’Urbino, known as the “Prince of Painters” for his works and his influence on the works of his successors. “I always wanted to overcome,” Valomir said. The imitation was attempted and ended up being considered regardless of the maestro’s memory. There is an example in the Prado gallery in action Lamentation for the dead Christ: A table weighing more than 300 kilograms and more than three meters high with the same dimensions Sicilian wonder By Rafael.
In the Prado on the floor, they restored the figure of Mengues, showing another special thanks to the painter who convinced Carlos III that he did not burn nudes from the royal collections. “Thanks to Tiziano’s paintings that remain lost forever,” Valomir says.
At the end of the comprehensive presentation, I summarized the key questions the commissioner asked before getting on the road. He assumes that the answer to why this exhibition was held is: “It is about how art is made. There are some basic values such as talent, although obviously this is not always the key to an artist’s success. It is also possible to evaluate His Highness with a distinguished painting and follow it with another in the history series. Mengs is precisely a combination of two things and the history of art has not been recognized,” he said. “The Prados see these exhibitions well, especially at a time when the museum’s programs seem interchangeable and predictable. Here we are betting on other models,” the expert concluded in the eyes of his boss Valomir.
