Pompeo Batoni - Diana and Cupid [1761]

Pompeo Batoni - Diana and Cupid [1761], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

The picture, by the greatest artist of eighteenth-century Rome, was painted for Sir Humphrey Morice (1723–1785), son of a wealthy merchant and director of the Bank of England. Morice was a great animal lover and in 1762 commissioned from Batoni a portrait of himself reclining in the Roman countryside after the hunt as a pendant to this picture, which shows the goddess of the hunt withholding the bow from Cupid. The picture was considered the finest Batoni had ever painted. The figure of Diana is based on the celebrated ancient statue of the sleeping Ariadne in the Vatican, which Batoni has invested with extraordinary warmth and feeling.

[Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York - Oil on canvas, 124.5 x 172.7 cm]