Pompeo Batoni - Portrait of a Young Man [c.1760-65]

Pompeo Batoni - Portrait of a Young Man [c.1760-65], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

The leading Italian painter of eighteenth-century Rome, Batoni was especially prized by foreigners as a portraitist. The sitter of this picture has not been identified, but he may be French. He is shown with some of Batoni's favourite Grand Tour props: an ancient bas-relief of Antinous, a statue of Minerva, an armillary sphere, guidebooks to ancient and modern Rome, a volume of biographies of painters, and the second part of Homer's Odyssey. A half-length portrait of the same man by Batoni is in the Rhode Island School of Design, Providence.

[Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York - Oil on canvas, 246.7 x 175.9 cm]