Batoni, Pompeo Girolamo (1708-1787)

Italian painter. He made detailed portraits of princes and British visitors to Rome on the Grand Tour. Most of his portraits are painted with a Roman antiquity in the background; Portrait of Henry Swinburne (Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne) is an example.

Batoni was born in Lucca but settled in Rome, first making a living by painting copies. He did some work for Roman churches, and painted some academic subject pictures, but is best known as a painter of elegant and dignified portraits, his best works displaying exquisite colour and brushwork, and vivid characterization. The desire for a souvenir of their Grand Tour brought many visitors to Rome to his studio, many English visitors among them, whom he would often depict against a background of classical ruins. When the neoclassical painter Anton Raffael Mengs left Rome for Madrid 1761, Batoni was without a rival as a portraitist.