The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (309 page)

(
c.
1430/40–94).
Netherlandish painter, active in Bruges from 1465. He was born in Seligenstadt, near Frankfurt, but nothing of his German heritage survives in his paintings, which show close connections with Rogier van der
Weyden
, by whom according to tradition he was taught. Memlinc was a conservative artist, but his softened and sweetened version of Rogier's style (there is some influence also from
Bouts
) made him the most popular Netherlandish painter of his day. Whereas Rogier excelled in the depiction of intense emotion, Memlinc's impeccably crafted paintings are quiet, restrained, and pious. Tax records indicate Memlinc was one of Bruges's wealthiest citizens and his large output shows he must have had a busy workshop. His style changed very little and it is difficult to place undated paintings in a chronological scheme. He painted numerous portraits and showed rather more originality in this field than in religious painting. Among his patrons were Italians then living in Bruges (
Tommaso Portinari and his wife
, Metropolitan Museum, New York,
c.
1468), and his portraits seem to have influenced artists such as Giovanni
Bellini
in northern Italy. Memlinc's work is best seen in the museum devoted to him at Bruges.

 
Back
  -  
 
New Search

(active 1317–47).
Sienese painter,
Simone Martini's
brother-in-law and most able follower. They jointly signed the celebrated
Annunciation
(Uffizi, Florence, 1333) and their respective shares in it are uncertain. Several other works are signed by Memmi , including
Madonnas
in the Staatliche Museen, Berlin, and the Church of the Servites at Siena, showing his refined draughtsmanship, delicate palette, and extremely sensitive modelling. He was not an innovator, but an indication of the high quality of his work is that several paintings are disputed between him and Simone. Like Simone, Memmi worked at the papal court at Avignon.

 
Back
  -  
 
New Search

(1728–79).
German painter, the son of a court painter of Dresden,
Ismael Mengs
(d. 1764). His father brought him up with harsh severity to be a great painter on the models particularly of
Correggio
and
Raphael
(from which artists he gained his Christian names), and of the
antique
. In 1741 he was taken to Rome and there established a reputation as a youthful prodigy. He returned to Germany in 1744 and became painter to the Saxon Court in Dresden in 1745. After another visit to Rome in 1748–9, when he married an Italian girl, he settled there in 1752 and became a close friend of
Winckelmann
, who provided much of the theoretical inspiration for his work. It was for Winckelmann's patron, Cardinal
Albani
, that Mengs painted his most famous work, the ceiling fresco
Parnassus
(1761) in the Villa Albani, Rome. This now seems flimsy and simpering, but it was the basis of Mengs's enormous reputation as the leader of the
Neoclassical
reform in painting (he was widely regarded as the greatest living painter). It breaks completely with
Baroque
illusionism
, treating the scene exactly as if it were to be seen at normal eye level, and is full of derivations from the most approved masters of the
Renaissance
. In 1761–9 and 1773–7 he worked as court painter in Spain, decorating the royal palaces at Madrid and Aranjuez. His frescos there are dull and sterile, but it is a sign of the move in taste towards Neoclassicism that he prevailed over his rival, Giambattista
Tiepolo
. Mengs was influential through his writings on art (which appeared in or soon after his lifetime in English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish) as well as his paintings. Today his portraits are considered vastly more successful than his history paintings, and he was
Batoni's
main rival as the leading portraitist in Rome.

 
Back
  -  
 
New Search

Menpes , Mortimer
.

See
WHISTLER
.

 
Back
  -  
 
New Search

(1815–1905).
German painter and engraver, active mainly in Berlin, where in 1832 he took over his dead father's lithographic business. He was extremely industrious and achieved fame with 400 illustrations (wood engravings from his lively drawings) for Franz Kugler's
History of Frederick the Great
(1840–2). In painting he worked on similar themes and with comparable success, creating the popular image of the founder of the Prussian state. From the 1860s he turned to subjects from modern life and was one of the first German painters to note the picturesque qualities of industry (
The Steel Mill
, Staatliche Museen, Berlin, 1875). Today Menzel is most highly regarded not for the works that brought him contemporary acclaim, but for a series of informal landscapes and interiors dating from the 1840s that remained virtually unknown in his lifetime. They are remarkably free and fresh in technique, unorthodox in composition, and both bold and refined in their treatment of light, presaging the developments of
Impressionism
(
The Artist's Sister with a Candle
, Neue Pinakothek, Munich, 1847). His attitude towards these paintings was strange; he kept them hidden and referred to Impressionism as ‘the art of laziness’, and when he visited Paris in 1855, 1867, and 1868 the artist he most admired was the tiresomely meticulous
Meissonier
.

 
Back
  -  
 
New Search