It all started in the eighteenth century. Curse the Grand Tour! It enabled romantic young men fed on a diet of sensible German art to wander around those warm sensuous regions of Italy crammed
with lavish artistic treasures. Their blank canvas minds were indelibly printed with the finest fruits of latin genius in the form of Italian sixteenth century painting.
 

When their money ran out these enlightened lads came back to boring, cold, definitely not sexy Germany and Austria imagining themselves as Raphael's heirs. Anton Raphael Mengs (1728 - 1779) court painter to the Elector Augustus III is the leader of the pack. Adopting the divine master's style he sterilized it by removing any trace of naturalism and then decided to brighten things up somewhat by making the outlines crisp and the colours saccharine and vivid. He achieves an almost paint by numbers effect and managed to imbue his canvases with the same lifelessness and clarity you find on Viennese porcelain plaques.

Mengs set a whole new fashion in German painting that was taken up by such exponents as Andreas Nesselthaler (1748-1821), Karl Peter Goebel (1791-1823), Johann Matthias Ranftl (1805-1854) and Carl Gutsch (1840- 1888) who might have achieved some degree of success in their home countries but whose names have been forever assigned to the international hall of forgettable painters. 

Raphael was not their only victim, Titian was also transmutated as was, Correggio and 
Palma Vecchio (all those busty blonde maidens must have rung a bell withour German lads.) 
 

Other ART WE LOVE TO HATE....
La Tour: The Ultimate Arriviste!

The 17th Century Lewd Dutch Tavern

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