意大利畫家 Pompeo Girolamo Batoni (1708 - 1787)

Pompeo Gerolamo Bottoni was born January 25, 1708, died February 4, 1787. He was an Italian painter who displayed a solid technical knowledge in his portrait work and in his numerous allegorical and mythological pictures. The high number of foreign visitors traveling throughout Italy and reaching Rome during their grand tour led the artist to specialize in portraits. Bottoni won international fame largely thanks to his customers, mostly British of noble origin. Whom he portrayed, often with famous Italian landscapes in the background. Such grand tour portraits by Bottoni were in British private collections, thus ensuring the genre's popularity in Great Britain. One generation later, Sir Joshua Reynolds would take up this tradition and become the leading English portrait painter. Although Bottoni was considered the best Italian painter of his time, contemporary chronicles mention his rivalry with Anton Raphael Manx. Bottoni's style took inspiration and incorporated elements of classical antiquity, French Rococo, Bolognese classicism, and the work of artists such as Nicolas Poussin, Claude Lorrain, and especially Raphael. As such Pompeo Bottoni is considered a precursor of neoclassicism.