The Hermitage possesses one of the best collections of works by Mengs in the world, painted at different periods in his career. Of these works the most famous is Perseus and Andromeda, its subject taken from Ovid's Metamorphoses, which was exhibited in the Palazzo Barberini in Rome in 1777, where it was much admired by those who saw it. Mengs sought his pure artistic forms in the Classical heritage: the work was essentially based on a Classical cameo which belonged to the artist's wife; the figure of Perseus was based on the statue of Apollo Belvedere, and that of Andromeda was borrowed from a Classical relief in the Villa Pamphili in Rome. The ordered nature of the unfussy composition, the ideally correct drawing, the skilful sculptural modelling of the figures and the majestic rhetorical gesture of the central figure all indicate that the work was composed according to the strict canons of Neoclassicism, of which Mengs was a devout follower.
[Oil on canvas, 227 x 153.5 cm]
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