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Updated: June 17, 2025
On the fifth day the wound was almost healed, but the exhaustion had left me so weak that I could not leave my bed. Such was my situation when I received a letter from Mengs.
When I come to my visit to Spain in 1767, I shall have some more to say about Mengs.
'On this ground, however unsafe, I will venture to prophesy, that two of the last distinguished painters of that country, I mean Pompeio Battoni and Rafaelle Mengs, however great their names may at present sound in our ears, will very soon fall into the rank of Imperiale, Sebastian Concha, Placido Constanza, Musaccio, and the rest of their immediate predecessors; whose names, though equally renowned in their lifetime, are now fallen into what is little short of total oblivion.
As may be imagined, I should have been only too glad to accept, but on the eve of my departure, as I was driving with Mengs, I was suddenly seized with a fever, and was convulsed so violently that my head was dashed against the carriage window, which it shivered to fragments. Mengs ordered the coachman to drive home, and I was put to bed.
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.
Though it cannot be denied that Mengs' writings and his pictures are learned, yet few artists have encountered such a storm of criticism. Next to correctness of drawing and dignity of conception, Poussin valued expression in painting. He ranked Domenichino next to Raffaelle for this quality, and not long after his arrival at Rome, he set about copying the Flagellation of St.
"I am not at all surprised at what you tell me. Mengs is only liked for his talents in painting; in everything else he is well known to be little better than a fool." As a matter of fact he had only asked me to stay with him to gratify his own vanity.
Full descriptions of this and of the Villa Borghese have been published. The Villa Albani, upon an eminence which commands Tivoli and the Sabina, is an edifice of taste and splendor. The cardinal Alexander Albani expended immense sums upon it, and, during the space of fifty years, collected a splendid cabinet. The ceiling of the gallery was painted by Mengs, and is a model of elegance.
Lanzi says, "From his acting as a continual censor of his own productions, he became among his fellow pupils the most exact and expressive designer, his colors most true to nature, and of the best impasto, the most universal master in the theory of his art, the sole painter amongst them all in whom Mengs found nothing to desire except a little more elegance.
The glimmering of the rising dawn, which shews the figures in the background, contributes to augment the splendor of the principal glory. "The beauty, grace, and finish of the piece," says Mengs, "are admirable, and every part is executed in a peculiar and appropriate style."
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