Pompeo Girolamo Battoni (January 25, 1708 – February 4, 1787)

Pompeo Girolamo Batoni was an Italian painter and draftsman of the academic direction of the Roman school. One of the most successful and sought-after Italian painters of the 18th century. The founder of the genre of formal representative portraiture.
Batoni was born in Lucca, Tuscany, to a family of goldsmith and jeweler Paolino Battoni and Chiara Sesti. In 1727, Batoni left for Rome, where he initially earned his living by drawing antique statues.

In Rome, Pompeo Girolamo Batoni studied painting with Agostino Masucci, Sebastiano Conca, and also completed a period of study in the workshop of Francesco Fernandi (Imperiali), mainly copying the works of Raphael and Annibale Carracci. In April 1732, the artist met Count Forte Gabrielli, conte di Baccaresca from Gubbio, who commissioned him to paint the famous Madonna Enthroned with Child and Four Saints and Blesseds of the Gabrielli Family di Gubbio (1732–33), the second version of which is kept in Venice, in the Galleria dell’Accademia.

Other commissions followed, including an altarpiece for the Church of Saints Celsus and Julian and The Deposition of Simon Magus for St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican (now in the Church of Santa Maria degli Angeli e dei Martiri). The Ecstasy of St. Catherine of Siena in the National Museum of Villa Guinigi in Lucca dates back to 1743. In 1741, Pompeo Batoni was accepted as a member of the Academy of San Luca. Batoni’s paintings were a success, especially after his rival Anton Raphael Mengs, a representative of early neoclassicism, moved to Madrid in 1761.

Batoni became the keeper of the papal collections in the Vatican. Representatives of the European aristocracy dreamed of receiving their portrait from Batoni, and the painter’s house became a meeting place for many artists of the time. Winckelmann was among his friends, and like him, Batoni strove for a moderate neoclassicism in his painting, imitating the paintings of old masters and outstanding predecessors, in particular, Raphael and Poussin.

Batoni created the fashion for the so-called “Grand Tour portraits”. When visiting Rome, wealthy travelers did not miss the opportunity to order a portrait from a famous artist. Batoni depicted famous travelers surrounded by antiquities, ancient ruins and works of art. He created over two hundred such portraits, and the more of them appeared in British private collections, the more popular this genre became in Great Britain.

Among those portrayed were Emperor Joseph II of Austria, Leopold II (Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire), Pope Pius VI, Cardinals Nicola and Leonardo Antonelli. Portraits were also commissioned by nobles of the Russian Empire, for example, Count K. G. Razumovsky and Prince A. M. Golitsyn. In old age, the artist’s health deteriorated, and he died in Rome on February 4, 1787, at the age of seventy-nine.

Batoni was buried in the parish church of San Lorenzo in Lucina. The executors of his last will were Cardinal Filippo Carandini and the Scottish antiquarian James Byers, but Batoni’s estate was declared insolvent and his widow was forced to write to the Grand Duke of Tuscany, begging for financial assistance. In exchange, the Duke received an unfinished self-portrait of Batoni, which is now in the Uffizi Museum. Rumor has it that before his death, Batoni bequeathed his palette and brushes to David Jacques-Louis with the words: “Only you and I can call ourselves artists.”