Anton Raphael Mengs (March 22, 1728[1] – June 29, 1779) was a German painter, active in Rome, Madrid and Saxony, who became one of the precursors to Neoclassical painting.
Mengs was born in 1728 at Ústà nad Labem (German: Aussig) in Bohemia. His father, Ismael Mengs, a Danish painter, established himself finally at Dresden, whence in 1741 he took his son to Rome.
In Rome, his fresco painting of Parnassus at Villa Albani gained him a reputation as a master painter. The appointment of Mengs in 1749 as first painter to Frederick Augustus, elector of Saxony, did not prevent his spending much time in Rome, where he had married Margarita Guazzi who had sat for him as a model in 1748, and abjured the Protestant faith, and where he became in 1754 director of the Vatican school of painting, nor did this hinder him on two occasions from obeying the call of Charles III of Spain to Madrid.
Mengs had a well-known rivalry with the contemporary Italian painter Pompeo Batoni. He was also a friend of Giacomo Casanova. Casanova provides accounts of his personality and contemporary reputation through anecdotes in Histoire de Ma Vie.
Mengs died in Rome in June 1779 and was buried in the Roman Church of Santi Michele e Magno.