Lot 611 | Anton Raphael Mengs | Portrait of Maria Antonia Walpurgis Symphorosa of Bavaria, Electress Princess of Saxony (1724-1780)

MENGS, ANTON RAPHAEL
1728 Aussig - 1779 Paris

and workshop
Title: Portrait of Maria Antonia Walpurgis Symphorosa of Bavaria, Electress Princess of Saxony (1724-1780).
Technique: Oil on canvas.
Mounting: Relined.
Measurement: 142.5 x 110.5cm.
Frame/Pedestal: Framed.
Provenance:
Auction Christie's, London, 07.12.2005, Lot. 132 (as successor to Mengs);
Private ownership, England.

Cf. Literature:
S. Roettgen: Anton Raphael Mengs 1728-1779, Volume 1: Das malerische und zeichnerische Werk, Munich 1999, cat. rais. no. 164, p. 236f.
The work shown here is included as a repetition in the digital supplement volume under the cat. rais. no. 164/WK06.

Wearing a sumptuous brocade dress and a blue ermine cloak, adorned with the red sash as well as the star of the Russian Order of St Catherine and the Austrian Order of the Star Cross, her right hand on the diamond-studded crown, the electoral princess stands in front of a red velvet curtain. The rich and luminous colours are hardly inferior to the first version preserved in the Dresden State Art Collections. In her Digital Supplement to the Mengs catalogue raisonné, Steffi Roettgen describes the quality of this work, especially in the execution of the jewels and fabrics, as hardly inferior to that of Mengs' other versions.

The sitter, Maria Antonia Walpurgis Symphorosa of Bavaria, was the daughter of the Elector and later Emperor Karl Albert of Bavaria and, from 1747, the wife of the Elector of Saxony, Friedrich Christian, whose portrait was painted by Mengs as a counterpart. A version of the first version, painted in 1750, was in the painter's estate in 1779 and is described as being of similar quality, so there is reason to suspect that the replica shown here may also have come from the estate.