Discount Pamono Workshop of Anton Raphael Mengs, Portrait of a Young Girl, 1750, Oil on Canvas, Framed

Portrait of a Young Girl with a Book

Oil on canvas
64 x 49 cm – framed 77 x 63 cm.

The work, depicting a captivating portrait of a young girl, is attributable to a neoclassical painter of the Roman school active in the 18th century, in the circle of Anton Raphael Mengs (Aussig, 1728 – Rome, 1779).

The subject is a young woman, immortalized in a half-length portrait, fashionably dressed in a dress with a boat neckline and puffed sleeves, adorned with a blue bow on the left sleeve and gold embroidery. She wears precious earrings composed of a large pearl from which three other drop-shaped pearls fall, while her hair is gathered in a hairstyle embellished with other simple yet precious jewels.

He holds a pen and a notebook, suggesting artistic or intellectual activity, supported by a composed expression and a penetrating, introspective gaze directed at the viewer.

The work reflects the eighteenth-century taste for the new vision of neoclassical art, which also embraced portraiture, abandoning the excessive and redundant Baroque aesthetic in favor of a return to the principles of balance, composure, and serenity. with these principles, Mengs quickly became famous and sought-after, rivaling the older Pompeo Batoni (1708-1787) for the role of the capital’s leading painter.

He moved to Rome in 1741 and quickly became an extraordinary portraitist, the highest-paid and most sought-after in Italy and at the European courts of the late eighteenth century, a point of reference for wealthy travelers on the Grand Tour who wished to visit his studio on Via Sistina to commission their portraits.

Confirming the reference to Mengs’s style are the pose, the details of the dress, and the lightened background, which creates a kind of aura around the figure. These are rendered here with such lightness and certainty that one might suggest the work was painted by an artist from his close circle or by a student.

The details and mastery of execution are very similar to the master’s works, including, for comparison, his self-portrait (fig. 1 – the Portrait of Johann Joachim Winckelmann and the Portrait of the Engraver Francesco Bartolozzi, in which we find the same technical skill as well as the same stylistic peculiarities and the same cut, which gives the sitters an incredible immediacy of expression. In all these works, the subjects are holding books and objects alluding to their culture.

The same shape and structure of earrings, extremely precious given the size of the pearls they contain, are depicted in his portrait of Maria Luisa of Bourbon.
Good condition with some surface restorations, complete with a gilded frame (good condition, minor losses).

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

The work is sold complete with a certificate of authenticity and an iconographic .