Mengs was born in Aussig in Bohemia (modern Ústí nad Labem, Czech Republic) in 1728, the son of the court painter there. He was himself appointed Dresden court painter in 1745. In 1755 he met Winckelmann, and subsequently he became a prominent figure in Roman Neoclassical circles. Mengs is important both as a painter and as a theorist. Apart from him, Germany’s and Austria’s main contribution to Neoclassicism was theoretical, not practical, however. The early Neoclassicists included Cristoph Unterberger; Anton von Maron, who married Mengs’s sister; and Friedrich Heinrich Füger. After Unterberger, the most interesting painter was Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein, who executed both portraits and subject pieces. He was a director of the art academy in Naples and supervised the publication of engravings of the Greek vases in the collection of Sir William Hamilton, the British ambassador to Naples, who was a notable connoisseur.

The German painter Asmus Jacob Carstens worked in Berlin and was a professor at the Berlin Academy. Members of his artistic circle included the painters Karl Ludwig Fernow, Eberhard Wächter, Joseph Anton Koch (who was the most outstanding of this German group), and Gottlieb Schick.

Italy

One of the earliest Neoclassicists and one of the foremost painters of his generation in Italy was Batoni. His style blends Rococo with Neoclassical elements, and his work includes classical subject pieces as well as portraits in contemporary dress, the sitter posing with antique statues and urns and sometimes amid ruins. The painter Domenico Corvi was influenced by both Batoni and Mengs and was important as the teacher of three of the leading Neoclassicists of the next generation: Giuseppe Cades, Gaspare Landi, and Vincenzo Camuccini. These artists worked mostly in Rome, the first two making reputations as portraitists, Landi especially being noted for good contemporary groups.

Rome was indeed the city where the principal Italian painters of this period were most active. One such was Felice Giani, whose many decorations include Napoleonic palaces there and elsewhere in Italy (especially Faenza) and in France.

Important painters outside Rome include Andrea Appiani the Elder in Milan, who became Napoleon’s official painter and executed some of the best frescoes in northern Italy. He was also a fine portraitist. One of his pupils was Giuseppe Bossi. Another leading Lombard painter was Giovanni Battista dell’Era, whose encaustic paintings were bought by Catherine the Great and others. Other good examples of Neoclassical decorative schemes outside Rome are in Florence (Pitti Palace) by the Florentine Luigi Sabatelli and by Pietro Benvenuti, who was born at Arezzo, and in Venice (Palazzo Reale) by Giuseppe Borsato, who was born in that city and was both painter and architect. Another painter of the time, though only given to a mildly Neoclassical style, was Domenico Pellegrini, born near Bassano, who traveled widely. The principal Neoclassicists in the south were the Sicilians Giuseppe Velasco, who did important frescoes in palaces in Palermo, and Giuseppe Errante.

Other countries

The main Danish painter who produced original Neoclassical works was Nicolai Abraham Abildgaard. Other Danish painters include Abildgaard’s and David’s pupil Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg. David was very influential in Brussels, where he retired late in life. The paintings of his Belgian pupil François-Joseph Navez, for example, are pure French Neoclassicism. The two main Neoclassical artists in The Netherlands were Humbert de Superville and Jan Willem Pieneman. The principal Neoclassicist in Spain was José de Madrazo y Agudo.