Batoni, Pompeo Girolamo

BATONI, POMPEO GIROLAMO. - Painter, b. in Lucca on 25 Jan. 1708, d. in Rome on 4 Feb. 1787. In Rome, where he went in 1728, he studied the sculptures of the Vatican and the paintings of Raphael; around 1739 he painted his first important work, the canvas with the Madonna and four saints for the church of S. Gregorio al Celio. Around 1740 he made the Magdalene (in Dresden, until 1945); in 1769 the Fall of Simon Magus for the Vatican basilica, but now in s. Maria degli Angeli. To about 1773 is dated the Prodigal Son of the picture gallery of Turin. In Rome B. worked to decorate the palace of the Quirinale and the Palazzo Colonna. Much sought after as a portraitist, B. portrayed almost all the princes who came to Rome. Famous too are his portraits of Benedict XIV, Clement XIII and Pius VI. In eighteenth-century Rome, B. was, together with Mengs, the most celebrated painter. He is distinguished from his rival by the grace, the softness of forms, the preciousness of drawing and color, the sentimentality of expression, qualities that, absent or nearly so in Mengs, link B. to the rococo far more than to neoclassicism.

Vincenzo Golzio