Anton Raphael Mengs

Bears unidentified collector's mark, lower right (L.619a)

The attribution to Mengs of this accomplished figure study, with its challenging pose, fine understanding of anatomy and skillful tonal modelling, has been confirmed by Dr. Steffi Roettgen, who will include it in the next supplement to her catalogue raisonné of the artist's drawings.

Though born, largely by chance, in Bohemia, Mengs lived his early life in Dresden, where his father was an successful painter.  In 1741, when Mengs was just thirteen years of age, the family moved to Rome, where he was to spend the great majority of his life, establishing himself as a central figure in the artistic life of the Eternal City during the period when the earliest murmurings of Neoclassicism were starting to be heard. 

Although the last digit of the date inscribed on this drawing is hard to read, it is probably a 5.  The inscription is not in the artist's own hand, but that seems a plausible dating for this sheet.  A very comparable academy study of a seated man seen from behind, similar in scale and handling, though executed in black rather than red chalk, is fully signed by the artist and dated 1755.¹  

1.  Rome, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale Vittorio Emanuele II; S. Roettgen, Anton Raphael Mengs, 1728–1779, vol. I: Das malerische und zeichnerische Werk, Munich 1999, p. 459, no. Z 10