Pleasure By ~ Anton Raphael Mengs ~ 1728 - 1779.

Anton Raphael Mengs, born in Bohemia (in what is now the Czech Republic), spent his childhood in Dresden, where his father, Ismael Mengs (1688–1764), was court painter to Friedrich August II (1696–1763) of Saxony, king of Poland. The aptly named youth was schooled principally in Rome, where he spent the greater part of his life from 1740 onward. Mengs was well known to his contemporaries as a practitioner and theorist of Neoclassicism; he has been less admired since, and it could perhaps even be argued that he was too much influenced by Raphael (1483–1520). Among Mengs' most famous works are the ballroom ceiling depicting Parnassus in Cardinal Albani's villa in Rome, completed in 1761, and the fresco decorations undertaken immediately thereafter in the royal palace in Madrid.