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Artist

Pompeo Batoni

Year
Luca 1708 - 1787 Rome
Price range
0 – 3,000,000 USD +
Pompeo Batoni is best known as the leading portraitist of Grand Tourists in Rome in the eighteenth century.

After Batoni’s death his reputation declined as other countries, notably England, produced more significant portraitists of their own. In recent years, Batoni’s reputation has been rejuvenated and the corpus of his work forms an important document of the cultural history of the eighteenth century.

In the first part of his career Batoni was best known for his history paintings and he became one of the most refined practitioners of the Roman grand manner descending from Raphael (1483–1520) and the baroque classicism of Maratti (1625–1713). The climax of his career as a history painter was the Fall of Simon Magus (1746–55) painted for Saint Peter’s and today in Santa Maria degli Angeli. With its sparkling technique and sense of drama the painting is much less academic than others of the Maratti school. A later subject picture Alexander and the family of Darius (Potsdam) is more severe in its relief composition and accords well with the work of Mengs (1728­–79) and other early Neoclassical painters in Rome.

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Selected artworks
Market

Top 3 auction prices

1,762,500 $
2011
2,507,384 $
2008
11,394,500 $
2013

Details

The sales are: Christie’s New York – 26 Jan 2011 lot 42, Sotheby’s London – 9 Jul 2008 lot 83 (1,273,250 GBP), and Sotheby’s New York – 31 Jan 2013 lot 73.
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Further reading

Edgar Peters Bowron, Pompeo Batoni: a Complete Catalog of his Paintings, New Haven, 2016.

Edgar Peters Bowron and Peter Björn Kerber, Pompeo Batoni: Prince of Painters in Eighteenth-Century Rome, exh. cat., New Haven, 2007.

Edmund Poole, ed., Music, Men and Manners in France and Italy, 1770, Being the Journal Written by Charles Burney, London 1969.

Notable Exhibitions

Lucca, Palazzo Ducale, Pompeo Batoni, 1708–1787: l’Europe delle Corti e il Grand Tour, 6 December 2008 – 29 March 2009. Curated by Liliana Barroero and Fernando Mazzocca.

Houston, Museum of Fine Arts, Pompeo Batoni: Prince of Painters in Eighteenth–Century Rome, 21 October 2007 – 27 January 2008; travelled to London, National Gallery, 20 February – 18 May 2008. Curated by Edgar Peters Bowron and Peter Björn Kerber.

Los Angeles, The J. Paul Getty Museum, Rome on the Grand Tour, 8 January – 11 August 2002. Curated by Scott Schaefer, Denise Allen, and Peggy Fogelman.

Philadelphia, Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Splendor of 18th–Century Rome, 16 March – 28 May 2000; travelled to Houston, Museum of Fine Arts, 25 June – 17 September 2000. Curated by Joseph J. Rishel, Ann Percy, and Dean Walker.

Lucca, Palazzo Ducale, Mostra di Pompeo Batoni: promossa dall’amministrazione provincale, June – September 1967. Curated by Isa Belli Barsali.

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