MENC412, ANTON RAFAEL, a modern German artist and writer on art, b. at Aussig, in Bohemia, Mar. 12, 1728. His father, Israel 3Iengs, was himself a painter, but possessed of very mediocre talent, and from hint young Rafael received his first instructions in art. At the age of thirteen he went to Rome, where he remained three years, rigorously devoting his w:iole time to the study of the works of Michael Angelo, Raphael, and others of the old masters. On his return to Dresden in 1744 he was appointed court painter to Augustus III., king of Poland and Saxony, but received permission at the same time to go back to Rome. Here he established his reputation by a picture of the " Holy Family." • The young peasant-girl who sat for the Vire-in so charmed the painter by her beauty that lie subsequently passed over to the RomaucCatholic church, and mar ried her. In 1754 he accepted the presidency of the newly instituted academy of paint ing at Rome. Within the next few years he executed the frescos in the church of San Eusebio. and those of " Apollo and the Muses on Parnassus" for cardinal Albani; besides which he copied Raphael's " School of Athens" for lord Percy, and painted several original pictures in oil, among which may be mentioned a Cleopatra," a "Holy Family,' and a " Magdalene." In 1761 lie went to Madrid, on an invitation from Charles III. of Spain, and w-hile there executed a great variety of works, the best-known of which is his "Aurora;" but ill-health and the intrigues of enemies induced to return to Italy. He had eo sooner arrived than Clement XIV. eniployed him on a large alle gorical subject for the Vatican library, representing Janus dictating to History, who appears in the act of writing. After three years he again visited Spain. To this period belongs his most celebrated effort; it represents the apotheosis of the emperor Trajan, and is executed on the dome of the grand saloon in the royal palace at Madrid. Ill health, however, again forced him to leave Spain. On his way back to Italy lie stopped at Monaco, where he painted his picture of the "Nativity," reckoned by many to be his finest piece. Shortly after reaching Rome he died, June 29, 1779. Meng,s's works are
careful and elaborate imitations of the great masters. He borfowed the technical quali ties of a painter in high perfection, but the living soul of genius, the quickening and creative Power of imagination, was not his. His works, therefore, though lofty in their subjects, seldom exhibit more than a correct and cultivated taste. Mengs'e writings were edited in Italian by Azara in 1780. There is an English translation (Lond. 1796).
(i.e., the teacher Meng; earlier, Maso-Ko; Latinized by the Jesuits into MENcrus); a Chinese sage. b. in the lieginning of the 4th c. B.C., in the village of Tseou, in the present district of Shan-tune-. He died about 317 B.C. Meng-tse is the greatest of the early Confucians. His father'died while Meng-tse WaS very young; but he was edu cated with such admirable care by his mother that the phrase "mother of Mene " has become a proverb for an excellent preceptress. At Bile period China was dividetrinto a number of states, all acknowledging the suzerainty of the emperor of Tseu. Meng-tse traveled to several courts, seekine- to introduce his doctrines of " virtue " and "justice:" but unfortunately, as too frequently happens, he found that princes and great men did not admire these things so much as poor scholars. His conversations with rulers and state-functionaries, with his disciples and acquaintances, were taken down by his admirers. They form the Hi-tsi, otherwise called the book of Meng-tse—the fourth of the Four Books. See CoxFucius. Many of the thoughts are exquisitely true, sugges tive, and subtle. Several translations of it have been published, but they fall far short of the energy, sententiousness, freshness, and vivacity of the original. One of the best is the Latin version of Stanislas Julien, 12 vols. (Paris, 1824), There is also an English one by Collie (Malacca, 1828), and another by Pauthier (Paris, 1851).