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Jan Baptist Weenix was a versatile Italianate painter. He is best known for his views of the Campagna with emphasis on a mother and child seen against massive classical ruins, and fanciful Mediterranean seaports, but he also painted histories, portraits, and indoor genre scenes as well as some remarkable still-lifes with dead game. His son and pupil Jan Weenix made a speciality of pictures of hunting trophies. Jan Baptist Weenix arrived in Rome in 1642-43 where he enjoyed the patronage of 'Kardinaal Pamfilio', who has been variously identified as Cardinal Giovanni Battista Pamphilj, who became Pope Innocent X in 1644, and as the Pope's nephew Cardinal Camillo Pamphilj. After he returned to Holland in 1646-47 he invariably signed himself Gio[vanni] Batt[ist]a Weenix. His adoption of the Italian translation of his Christian name and patronymic may have been in honour of Innocent X who gave him at least one commission.
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