“RESTRAINED BRIGHTNESS AND ARCHAIC PURITY”. FASCINATION FROM THE ANTIQUITY IN THE AGE OF ENLIGHTMENT.

Villa Negroni’s frescoes in Rome: models of good taste according to Mengs and Azara

Resumo

The find in 1777 of the frescoes adorning Villa Peretti Montalto-Negroni in Rome was a unique opportunity to foster the renewed interest in ancient painting that Enlightenment Europe was feeding.Protagonists of the excavations in the surroundings of present Termini railway station were the Aragones diplomat Jose Nicolas de Azara (promoter) and his Bohemian intimate friend Anton Raphael Mengs (drawer), the artist who went down in history as the painter philosopher. The frescoes that Mengs could admire and copy, along with his writings on art theory, influenced the European taste, especially in the parietal decoration of private houses in England, as well as in distant Russia where Czarina Catherine II decided to entirely decorate the Silver Cabinet in the style of the recently found frescoes. This paper presents four unreleased and illuminated engravings, which are stored in the locals of the Archaeological Museum of Seville, but until now had escaped all inventories.