Pompeo Batoni: 10 works

'Pompeo Batoni made this sketch when he was only twenty-eight, in preparation for his first important commission in Rome. He was commissioned to create a life-size altarpiece that still hangs in the the church of Saints Celsus and Julian today.'

'Batoni's original works, today in private collections in Turin, were executed for Francesco Conti of Lucca, one of the painter's patrons.'

'His paintings were especially popular among English visitors to Italy: Lady Anna Riggs Miller's declaration that he was "esteemed the best portrait painter in the world" is typical of contemporary views on his talent. This portrait of William Fermor in a red velvet coat lined with lynx (a type worn in winter by the British in Italy) demonstrates Batoni's ability to create a striking and memorable likeness.'

'Pompeo Batoni's achievements as a draftsman are less well known than his religious and mythological paintings or his many portraits of foreign visitors to Rome and on their Grand Tour of Italy. But Batoni was famous among his contemporaries for his ability to draw, and his drawings today are equally highly esteemed.'

'Batoni placed so much emphasis on his studies of the nude from life that he often signed and dated them, as was the case with this sheet's companion piece, also in the Philadelphia Museum of Art and signed "Pompeo Batoni 1765." In the private life-drawing classes Batoni held in his studio in Rome, he required that the students copy his own academies and preparatory studies as well as draw from the live model.'

'The Temple of Vesta at Tivoli, included in the background, was one of the most admired of all Roman monuments, and the copy of the bust of the Giustiniani Minerva, by then in the Vatican collections, reappears in several other Grand Tour portraits by Batoni and was probably a studio prop.'

'Joseph II and Pietro Leopoldo visited Batoni's studio in via Bocca di Leone six times for morning sittings.'

'Pompeo Batoni was known for his portraits of wealthy Grand Tourists during their stay in Rome. He frequently depicted them in the presence of antiquities in order to amplify their image as learned, cultivated, yet leisured aristocrats.'

'Batoni settled in Rome in 1727 and established himself as a leading history painter and one of Europe's most popular portrait painters. With its learned classicism, excellent draughtsmanship, and refined elegance, Batoni's style would influence later artists who lived in Rome, most notably Jacques-Louis David, Anton Raphael Mengs, and William Hamilton.'

'Convention that was fashionable among the British artists, the Van Dyke dress reached the studio of Batoni perhaps at the instigation of travellers, or more probably by means of Thomas Jenkins, student of the portraitist Thomas Hudson.'