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"THE NEAPOLITAN BOY."-FROM THE PAINTING BY GUSTAV RICHTER.

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The seventeenth century was marked by a few feeble, unsuccessful attempts to imitate the great Italian masters of the Renaissance; and it was not until the beginning of the eighteenth century, when Germany was to some extent recovering from the effects of the Thirty Years' War, that any artist arose of sufficient individuality to merit special notice, and to aid in the transition to better things. Of these we may name as among the more remarkable : Johann Rottenhammer (1564-1623), who strove to emulate Tintoretto-a Pan and Syrinx by him is in the National Gallery; Adam Elshaimer (1574-1620), famous for his landscapes, many of which are in private galleries in England; Joachim van Sandrat (1606-1688), who painted allegoric and historic pieces, but is more famous as the author of the "Teutsche Academie," a history of German art; Balthasar Denner (1685-1747), a successful portrait painter, famed for the minute finish of his works, of which examples may be seen at Hampton Court. Christian Wilhelm Ernst Dietrich, who was born at Weimar in 1712, became court painter to Augus

tus II. of Poland, and to his successor Augustus III. He studied in Rome, and on his return was made keeper of the Dresden Gallery. He was a popular and successful man throughout his life, and yet he never painted an original picture. He was a universal copyist. The verdict of Michelangelo on Baccio Bandinelli applies equally to Dietrich : "Who walks behind another, will never pass him by." He walked behind numberless masters. the illustration we have given from an engraving by himself, The Knife Grinder, the influence of Van Ostade is plainly discernible. If we look at his fifty-one works in the Dresden Gallery, we shall see Gerard Dou in The Young Woman and her Children,

DIETRICH.

In

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and recognize Van der Werff in the Golden Age. The shadow of Salvator Rosa falls upon Cuirassiers on a March, and a memory of Raphael haunts an

Italian landscape with a Holy Family. Adriaan van Ostade, Jan Both, Watteau, Dujardin, and many another look at us from the canvases of Dietrich. He died at Dresden in 1774

Anton Raphael Mengs (1728-1779) was born at Aussig, in Bohemia. If it could not be said of him that "he lisped in numbers," it was true that his earliest plaything was a pencil. His father, who was a miniature painter, had determined that his son should be an artist, and named him after Correggio and Sanzio. As a little child Raphael Mengs was sent to study the masters in the gallery of Dresden, Iwhither his father had removed. Thence, when only thirteen, the boy was taken to Rome, and was shut up in the Vatican all day long with a crust of bread and a can of water. Thus the path of art was not strewn with roses for Raphael Mengs. When quite a youth he became court painter to Augustus III, King of Poland and Elector of Saxony, who allowed him to con

tinue his studies in Rome.

grief and unskillful medical treatment. With all the advantages of his early training and laborious youth, with all the care and study of the antique which he lavished upon his work, Mengs lacked the two qualities which make a great painteroriginality and warmth. Although he shows signs of the art of better days, in a period of degradation, he is always cold and lifeless even in his greatest works. It is strange that Winckelmann, the distinguished critic of ancient art, should have had no more insight into this fact than to affirm that Mengs was

ANGELICA KAUFFMANN.

FROM A PORTRAIT BY HERSELF.

There he painted a

Holy Family, taking as his model for the Virgin a peasant girl whom he married, changing his creed to accommodate the feelings of his wife. In 1761 Mengs visited Madrid at the invitation of Charles III., and executed many of his greatest works, among them the Apotheosis of Trajan, on the ceiling of the dining-hall of the palace at Madrid. Once more in Rome for a space of three years, we find Mengs painting his famous Allegory on the ceiling of the Camera de' Papini. He was in Spain till 1775, when he again visited Rome, and then having lost his wife in 1778, Mengs died within a year, of

art.

the greatest painter of that "or perhaps of any age." His pictures are rare in France, there are some in Saxony and Italy, and the greatest number in Spain. His masterpiece is an Adoration of the Shepherds in the Museo del Rey at Madrid. Two Portraits of Himself in the Munich Gallery, another in the Uffizi, and a Portrait of his Father at Berlin, and his picture of St. Peter in the Belvedere Gallery at Vienna, show his power in this department of

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He was also the author of "Thoughts on Painting, and Reflections on Painters."

Angelica Kauffmann was born at Schwartzenberg, in the Bregenzer Wald, Austria, in 1741. At the age of fifteen she was taken by her father to Milan, to improve in the arts of Music and Painting, and in 1763-64 she visited Naples and Rome, and became known as a portrait painter. The Abbé Winckelmann, who sat to her, mentions Angelica Kauffmann with the highest praise. After visiting Venice she came to England in 1765 with Lady Wentworth, wife of the British Ambassador. Here she was soon the center of a brilliant society, and was equally

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famous for her wit, her amiability, and her power as a portrait painter. She also painted fanciful subjects, of which Blind Man's Buff is a characteristic example. In 1768 she achieved the honor of being elected one of the original members of the Royal Academy. Her unfortunate marriage with an impostor, calling himself Count Horn, and her subsequent union to

her first love, Antonio Zucchi, which also proved unfortunate, have cast a glamor of romance over this artist's life. She returned to Rome, and devoted herself very successfully to historical painting till her death in 1807. The works of Angelica Kauffmann are rather pleasing than powerful. Fifteen of her pictures are in the collection of Lord Exeter.

On the borderland between these masters and the revival of German art by Overbeck, stands Asmus Jacob Carstens (1754-1798), who

first practiced por

remarkable more for their depth of thought and careful execution than for originality, either of design or treatment.

THE SCHOOL OF MUNICH.

Peter von Cornelius (1784-1867) was the restorer of the long-disused art of fresco-painting on a large

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scale, and the founder of the Munich School. At the early age of nineteen he gave proof of considerable genius in the frescoes he painted for the cupola of the old church of Neuss, and four years later he produced a marvelous series of illustrations of Goethe's "Faust" and of the "Nibelungenslied," full of bold invention, but perhaps inferior in coloring and expression. In 1811 he went to Rome, where he remained for eight years diligently studying the works of the old masters; and on his return to Germany, at the invitation of Ludwig I. of Bavaria, he embodied the results of his new experience in the great frescoes, by which he is chiefly known, which adorn the Glyptothek and the Ludwig Kirche at Munichthose in the former representing scenes from heathen mythology, in the latter a series of events from the New Testament.

trait-painting as a ST. PETER. BY MENGS. IN THE GALLERY OF THE BELVEDERE, VIENNA.

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means of gaining

a livelihood, but afterward became successful in historic painting. He worked at various times at Copenhagen, Mantua, where he studied Giulio Romano Lübeck; Berlin and Rome, where he formed his style on the works of Michelangelo and Raphael. His principal paintings are scenes from the history of the Argonautic expedition.

Carstens' works display a profound study of the productions of Raphael and Michelangelo, and are

Of Cornelius's numerous pupils, his favorite

Wilhelm von Kaulbach (1805-1874) was the only one who attained to anything of an independent

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