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| Anton Raphael Mengs, Salvator Mundi (1778), after conservation |
Anton Raphael Mengs' long-lost
Salvator Mundi (1778) came up for
auction in Munich in September 2015. Once an icon of neoclassicism, it was known only from copies until the original was identified by Steffi Roettgen. The painting was auctioned as-is, with a crack on the right of the panel and many small areas of damage: "Due to the complexity of Anton Raphael Mengs' technique, the preservation and restoration of the surface should be reserved for careful restoration after thorough analysis of the current state of preservation."
LACMA's website shows it now owns the painting. Judging from the site image (at top; the painting is not yet on view), there's been an amazing transformation.
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| Pre-conservation detail |
American collectors and museums were late in warming up to neoclassical painting. When they did, they favored the French school of David and Ingres, drawing on Greco-Roman antiquity. An understudied phase of Neoclassicism was Germanic and sometimes treated Christian themes. Besides the
Salvador Mundi, LACMA has
a Mengs portrait, and
a full-length portrait by Pompeo Batoni, who was in some ways Mengs' inspiration. The
Salvador Mundi was based on Batoni's savior in Rome's Church of Il Gesù (1767).
Bohemian/German Mengs imagined a Jesus who is symmetrical, androgynous, and not especially Jewish-looking. That conception still informs religious illustration, from
Watchtower to Jack Chick to
South Park.
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| Still from Jack Chick's YouTube video Light of the World: Jesus—The Way, The Truth, & The Life |
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