Pompeo Girolamo
Batoni

Batoni (battoni), Pompeo Girolamo (ital. Pompeo Girolamo Batoni (Battoni)) (1708, Lucca – 1787, Rome) was an Italian painter of the academic direction, used in the 18th century great popularity. Born in Tuscany, lived and worked in Rome, where he became a leader of the artistic life of Italy. In his work, all his life he sought harmoniously Societate nature and the ideal, trying to uncover the phenomenon of the art of Raphael, his idol. Painted on antique and mythological subjects. Among his works are characterized by a virtuosic technique, the most famous series of paintings about the hero Achille, the artist for the gallery Oficii.

Batoni (battoni), Pompeo Girolamo (ital. Pompeo Girolamo Batoni (Battoni)) (1708, Lucca – 1787, Rome) was an Italian painter of the Rococo style and Neoclassicism.

Batoni was born in Lucca, in the family of jeweler There battoni. Perhaps the lessons of his father's craft caused a sustained commitment Batoni to jewelry the elegance and elegance of form. In 1727 or 1728 Batoni went to Rome, where he first earned a living as a transcription of antique statues. In Rome, Batoni studied with Agostino Masucci, Sebastiano Conca, perhaps Francesco Imperiale.

Batoni fate has developed successfully. Already in the early 1740s, he had no shortage of orders for altar images, mythological, historical and allegorical paintings, and in 1741 he was admitted as a member of the Academy of St. Luke. Batoni went to Rome in a big fashion, especially after his colleague and rival Anton Raphael Mengs, a representative of the early Neoclassicism, moved in 1761 to Madrid.

Thank portraitist attracted to his Studio to know the highest aristocratic from all over Europe, he was commissioned portraits of the Pope and the monarchs. He was the curator of the papal collections and his house became a meeting place for artists of those days, social and intellectual center. Among his friends included Winckelmann, and, like him, Batoni sought in his paintings to moderate classicism of the old masters, in contrast to the then fashionable style of the Venetian artists. The painter Benjamin West, who lived in Rome in 1760, complained that the Italian artists "anything else did not say anything else did not look, but the work of Pompeo Batoni". He became such a respected master that many of his contemporaries, who devoted to him a page of his works, trying to figure out what "manner of Batoni" why he was destined to occupy a leading position in Rome and to become, according to Winckelmann, "one of the best in the world." Art Batoni didn't conflict with public taste and found constant recognition from contemporaries.

Batoni was married twice: in 1729 – Katherine Network (mind. in 1742), and later, in 1742, – Lucia, and colour. Of his twelve children three sons were his assistants in the art classes.

Starting from 1759 Batoni lived in a large house on the via Boca di Leone in Rome, which housed his Studio, exhibition rooms and a drawing school.

Batoni died in Rome, and, according to rumor, he bequeathed his palette and brushes to Jacques-Louis David.