Pompeo Batoni

Pompeo Girolamo Batoni (25 January, 1708 - 4 February, 1787) was an Italian painter whose style incorporated elements of the French Rococo, Bolognese classicism, and nascent Neoclassicism.

Biography

He was born in Lucca, the son of a goldsmith, Paolino Batoni. He moved to Rome in 1727, and apprenticed with Agostino Masucci, Sebastiano Conca and/or Francesco Imperiale (1679-1740).

By the early 1740s, however, he started to receive independent commissions. In 1741, he was inducted into the Accademia di San Luca. His celebrated painting, "The Ecstasy of Saint Catherine of Siena" (1743) [ [http://www.wga.hu/html/b/batoni/extasy.html| "Ecstasy of Saint Catherine of Siena"] at Museo di Villa Guinigi in Lucca.] illustrates his academic refinement of the late-Baroque style. Another masterpiece, his "Fall of Simon Magus" [ [http://www.clevelandart.org/Explore/artistwork.asp?artistLetter=B&recNo=63&woRecNo=0| "Fall of Simon Magus"] (1750) at Cleveland Museum of Art.] was painted initially for the St Peter's Basilica.

Batoni became a highly-fashionable painter in Rome, particularly after his rival, the proto-neoclassicist Anton Raphael Mengs, departed for Spain in 1761. Batoni befriended Winckelmann and, like him, aimed in his painting to the restrained classicism of painters from earlier centuries, such as Raphael and Poussin, rather than to the work of the Venetian artists then in vogue.

He was greatly in demand for portraits, particularly by the British traveling through Rome [ [http://www.getty.edu/art/gettyguide/artObjectDetails?artobj=767| "Portrait of John Talbot"] ] [ [http://www.oberlin.edu/allenart/collection/batoni_pompeo.html| "Portrait of John Wodehouse"] ] , who took pleasure in commissioning standing portraits set in the milieu of antiquities, ruins, and works of art. There are records of over 200 portraits by Batoni of visiting British patrons [ "European Paintings"; Keith Christiansen. Notable Acquisitions (Metropolitan Museum of Art) (1982) pp39-41.] . Such "Grand Tour" portraits by Batoni came to proliferate in the British private collections, thus ensuring the genre's popularity in the United Kingdom, where Sir Joshua Reynolds would become its leading practitioner. In 1760, the painter Benjamin West, while visiting Rome would complain that Italian artists "talked of nothing, looked at nothing but the works of Pompeo Batoni" [K. Christiansen. p40] .

In 1769, the double portrait [ [http://www.khm.at/system2E.html?/staticE/page222.html| "Portrait of Emperor Joseph and his brother, Grand Duke Leopold, in Rome"] ] of Joseph II and Leopold II won an Austrian nobility for Batoni. He also portrayed Pope Pius VI [ [http://mv.vatican.va/3_EN/pages/x-Schede/PINs/PINs_Sala15_02_058.html| "Portrait of Pius VI"] ] . According to a rumor, he bequeathed his palette and brushes to Jacques-Louis David.

He was married twice, to Caterina Setti (d. 1742) in 1729, and then to Lucia Fattori in 1747, and had twelve children; three of his sons assisted in his studio. From 1759 Batoni lived in a large house on the Via Bocca di Leone in Rome, which included a studio as well as exhibition rooms and a drawing academy. He died in Rome.

Exhibition

He is the subject of a major exhibition at the National Gallery in London finishing on 18 May 2008.

Gallery

References

*cite book|first=M.|last=Clarck|title=Pompeo Batoni|location=Oxford|year=1985

Footnotes

External links

* [http://www.all-art.org/rococo/batoni1.html Pompeo Batoni in the "A World History of Art"]
* [http://www.npg.org.uk/live/search/person.asp?LinkID=mp06659&role=art| UK National Portrait Gallery] Images of Frederick North, 2nd Earl of Guilford, Augustus Henry Fitzroy, 3rd Duke of Grafton, and Philip Metcalfe.