Buzási Enikő szerk.: In Europe' Princely Courts, Ádám Mányoki, Actors and venues of a portraitist's career (A Magyar Nemzeti Galéria kiadványai 2003/1)

Harald Marx: "THE LUCKY STAR OF PAINTING HAS RISEN" Painting and Art Patronage in Dresden under Augustus the Strong and Augustus III

which one can duly add the well supplied gallery, this valuable collection of the most perfect masterpieces of small and large paintings."

72 There was a single work by Bernardo Bellotto - Ruins of the former Holy Cross Church - included as an appendix to the 1765 catalogue, whereas his Dresden vedutas are the most cherished treasures of the gallery now. The rest of his paintings were kept in the store-room, as the catalogue noted.

73 His fellow countryman, Stefano Torelli, who played a prominent role during his time in Dresden, did not earn the glory of a place in the gallery, while count Pietro Rotari was represented by three paintings in the collection.

74 A different lot was meted out to Anton Raphael Mengs. Bianconi wrote: "The king was notified that Ismael [Mengs] had other pastel paintings by his son preserved in his house; he ordered them brought to him, paid generously for them, and put them up in the room called the Rosalba room in Dresden. [...] This is only noted as an indication of how early on the works of this young man were deemed worthy of such good company at a place that was later to be called the shrine of pastel paintings."

75 Young Anton Raphael Mengs did indeed owe his renown to his paintings in the royal hall of pastels, where they were together with the pastels of Rosalba Carriera, the Venetian painter whom Augustus III held in such great esteem.

76 In 1786, Carl Heinrich von Heineken described two self-portraits by Mengs as outstanding pieces of the room: "In the room of pastels in Dresden's Gallery of the Elector are two portraits of Raphael Mengs, presumably both deserving to be engraved in copper, especially the one with cascading hair. His father wanted him to dress and behave the way Raphael of Urbino is depicted."

77 The art collections of Dresden had a generally beneficial influence on the artistic development of Mengs. Let us cite Bianconi again: "Anton Raphael was highly satisfied with this beginning, and from then on he visited the gallery, which is apparently the richest treasure in Europe, with his father, upon the king's order."

78 As can be seen, the gallery gradually became the grand school and model collection for the artists of Dresden and also provided a standard measure by which everyone could judge their creative endeavours. Anton Raphael Mengs was to realise this interplay between the collection and local art at an early age.

79 At the art academy of Dresden, it was also a fundamental axiom to rely on the interrelation between art instruction and the collection. Benjamin Gottfried Weinart wrote about that in 1777: "Though the size of the academy is smaller than many of its counterparts, it can be declared that the Bernardo Bellotto, called Canaletto: The Neumarkt in Dresden as seen from the Jüdenhof. Etching, 1749 Dresden, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Kupferstichkabinett