Established in 1994, The Course offers innovative and exciting lectures in Art History, Literature, Music and Opera.
In this series on German Art, we will go from medieval to modern Germany through artists who would come to be a major influence not just on Northern art but also on the Italian Renaissance and ultimately European art. It will begin in the 1460s and demonstrate the interconnectivity of German artists through their itinerancy, their ingenuity, and rigorous work ethic. Each of the weekly lectures will take a look at an individual artist and in so doing take us from the medieval wood carvings of Tilman Riemenschneider, to the Renaissance art of Lucas Cranach the Elder and Hans Holbein the Younger, to the Baroque art of Adam Elsheimer; from Neo-Classicism to Romanticism and finally to German art of the 19th century with its impact on French Impressionism.
Anton Raphael Mengs (1728 – 1779)
This lecture will trace the life of the Neo-classical painter Anton Raphael Mengs, born in Bohemia, and who specialized in pastel portraits. He was trained by his father, Ismael Mengs, (Dresden Court Painter) who was obsessed with Italian Renaissance art and in particular two artists after whom he named his son – Anton (Correggio) and Raffael (Raphael). We will look at his journey from child prodigy to Italy where he became the principle of the Accademia di S. Luca, to Pompeii and Herculaneum, and to Spain as court painter in the service of Charles III. He eventually moved back to Germany to take on his father’s post