BATONI, Pompeo
(b. 1708, Lucca, d. 1787, Roma)

Sir Gregory Page-Turner

1768
Oil on canvas, 135 x 99 cm
Private collection

Batoni was known and appreciated primarily as a portraitist in his own time. He painted most of the European princes who visited Rome, as well as three popes, but he was above all in demand with the European aristocracy, particularly the British travelling to Italy as part of the Grand Tour, owing to his creation of a new type of portrait in which he depicted the sitter against an antique, classical background.