86 THE FINE ARTS. 
ninety-nine out of a hundred requisites for a painter. Under such auspices 
true art could not prosper in Rome, and hence even the masters after Ber- 
nini are scarcely worthy of mention. Venesiale and Batoni were the first 
again to leave the beaten track. 
Pompeo Girolamo Batoni (b. 1708, d. 1787) came to Rome when very 
young and became a pupil of Masucci; but being endowed with extraordi- 
nary talents, he soon perceived that Raphael, nature, and the antique were 
the surest guides in the domain of art; and hence the study of nature makes 
itself conspicuous in all his pictures. We discern it in his pleasing and 
varied physiognomies, his movements and attitudes ; and even in disposing 
the folds of his draperies he was able to snatch from nature a certain pleas- 
ing grace, of which his Magdalen in the Dresden Gallery furnishes a 
beautiful example. 
The second restorer of art in Rome was Anton Raphael Mengs (b. 1728, 
d. 1779). He was born in Aussig in Bohemia, and his father, himself a 
good miniature painter, destined him to painting, so that in his sixth year 
he was obliged to draw and in his eighth to paint in oil, miniature, and 
enamel. He was kept to study with almost unheard of strictness: and 
when his father observed his great progress, he in 1741 took him from 
Dresden, where he had hitherto studied, to Rome, and there, the lad being 
now in his thirteenth year, he judiciously made him copy at first after the 
antique, then after Michael Angelo in the Sixtine chapel, and lastly after 
Raphael, treating him all the while with the same severity as when a boy. 
Mengs spent three years at these studies in Rome; at the expiration of 
which time his father took him back to Dresden, where king Augustus III. 
gave him a yearly allowance of 600 thalers. With this Mengs, his father, and 
two sisters went again to Rome. Here he studied four years longer, giving 
especial attention to anatomy; and then at length he made his appearance 
publicly with a Holy Family, which obtained universal applause. About 
1749 he returned once more to Dresden, where he became court painter with 
a salary of 1,000 thalers, and was commissioned to paint the altar-piece for 
the new Catholic church erected in 1751, a work which he executed in Rome, 
whither he returned in 1752. As during the Seven Years’ War his salary was 
no longer paid, Mengs painted in fresco the ceiling of the church of St. Euse- 
bius in Rome. This was again the first work of the kind in Rome, where 
fresco painting had not been practised for a long time, and Mengs gained 
by it greatapplause. He painted for the villa of Cardinal Albani a ceiling, 
on which he represented Apollo and the Nine Muses. 
In the year 1761 Mengs entered, with a yearly salary of 2,000 doubloons, 
into the service of the king of Spain; and there he began a ceiling for the 
king’s chamber representing the Assembly of the Gods: he also executed 
many other admirable works there, among whch a Descent from the Cross 
is especially celebrated. From this time forward Mengs resided alternately 
in Rome, Madrid, Florence, and Naples, working very diligently, until con- 
sumption, brought on by his incessant labors and the climate of Spain, 
which did not agree with him, snatched him from the world. No diminution 
of power is observed in his works to his latest moment. 
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