BATONI, POMPEO GIROLAMO

born Jan. 25, 1708, Lucca, Tuscany died Feb. 4, 1787, Rome Batoni also spelled Battoni Italian painter, who in his own time was ranked with Anton Raphael Mengs as a painter of historical subjects. Probably his portraits are now better known, as he invented the type of "grand tourist" portrait, very popular among the English, which shows the sitter at his ease among the ruins of antiquity. Batoni first gained fame as a painter of florid and elaborate mythological allegories. From the 1750s until his death, however, he was the preeminent portraitist in Rome. His smoothly finished ceremonial portraits of important personages combined elements of the Rococo, Bolognese classicism, and emergent Neoclassicism.