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Updated: June 17, 2025
I was sitting at table with Mengs when a chamberlain of the Holy Father called. When he came in he asked M. Mengs if I lived there, and on that gentleman pointing me out, he gave me, from his holy master, the Cross of the Order of the Golden Spur with the diploma, and a patent under the pontifical seal, which, in my quality as doctor of laws, made me a prothonotary-apostolic 'extra urbem'.
The letter made the ambassador sorry that he had not interposed on my behalf, but he hoped people would believe that the count would not have acted as he did if it had not been for his interposition. His favourite, Count Manucci, had come to ask me to dinner; as it happened I was engaged to Mengs, which obtained an invitation for the painter, and flattered his vanity excessively.
Before I left him he said his daughter should dine with me that day as he was very busy. I called on the Count of Aranda, who received me coldly, but with great politeness. I told him how I had been treated by my parish priest and by Mengs.
He was also largely given to the discussion of metaphysical questions, on which his knowledge was simply nil, and a favourite pursuit of his was defining beauty in the abstract, and when he was on this topic the nonsense he talked was something dreadful. Mengs was a very passionate man, and would sometimes beat his children most cruelly.
The celebrated painter Mengs imitated that idea in the picture of the Annunciation which he painted in Madrid twelve years afterwards, but I do not know whether he had the same reasons for it as my painter.
"Farewell till to-morrow," said I to Therese, but she only answered by turning on her side to go to sleep. I went to bed after ordering dinner for one o'clock, and I slept till noon, dreaming of Therese. When I woke up, Costa told me that he had found out where my brother lived, and had left a note at the house. This was my brother Jean, then about thirty, and a pupil of the famous Raphael Mengs.
It is impossible to conceive the splendid effect it produced. Besides some fine pictures on gold by Raphael Mengs, there was a Madonna, the largest specimen of enamel painting in existence. However costly the contents of these halls, they were only an introduction to those which followed. Each one exceeded the other in splendor and costliness.
Guarienti and my brother left Venice for Rome, where Jean remained in the studio of the celebrated painter Raphael Mengs, whom we shall meet again hereafter.
He married her next year, and two years afterwards he took her to Dresden. I saw her five years later with a pretty baby; but after ten years of married life she died of consumption. I found Mengs at the Villa Albani; he was an indefatigable worker, and extremely original in his conceptions.
The most successful of his works are portraits, in which masterly treatment makes up to some extent for the absence of originality and subtle sympathy. But in his day, and with some reason, Raphael Mengs was greatly prized, since he figured among a host of ignorant, careless, and conceited painters. At the age of seventeen he was appointed court painter to King Augustus of Saxony.
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