Pompeo Girolamo Batoni

The Italian painter Pompeo Girolamo Batoni was born in Lucca in 1708 as the son of a goldsmith. After completing his training in his father's workshop, he finally came to Rome in 1727. There he was a pupil of the painters Sebastiano Conca, an artist of the late baroque period, and Agostino Masucci, a portrait painter.
Batoni's works were initially very much oriented towards antiquity and the Italian painter Raphael. His paintings were influenced by religious and mythological themes, such as his famous painting of Mary Magdalene ("Penitent Magdalene"). Later he began to depict English tourists in front of antique architecture. Thus Batoni is considered the inventor of the tourist portrait and one of the leading portrait painters of the 18th century. There are said to have even been complaints sometimes, as Batoni demanded a lot of money for his portraits. What made his works particularly famous was their successful resemblance to living models. Not least his apprenticeship as a goldsmith probably also contributed to the fact that he worked out his portraits down to the smallest detail.

Among his friends was the German archaeologist, librarian and antiquarian Johann Joachim Winckelmann, who is also known as the intellectual founder of classicism. Batoni is also considered a pioneer of neo-classicism in Italy, which replaced the Baroque during Batoni's creative period.

Batoni was raised to the nobility by the Roman-German Emperor Joseph II. In his time, his skills were highly esteemed, and he was put on a par with those of Anton Raphael Meng, who was also known as the "second Raphael" at the time. He was successful with his portraits of foreign visitors to Rome for almost four decades, until he finally died in 1787, also in Rome.