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Tuesday 2 December 2008

Face value

Pompeo Batoni 1708–1787
National Gallery, until 18 May

The portraits of the 1780s, when Batoni was in his seventies and finally beginning to slow down, are altogether gentler in approach and seem to have a greater depth of psychological penetration. The delicacy and fluency of his brushwork can be seen here in the lively portrait of Princess Cecilia Mahony Giustiniani. Perhaps Batoni simply had more time to give his sitters and took more trouble to understand them. Or perhaps he simply relaxed a bit. In a letter of 1742 he admitted to a friend: ‘It is necessary to use a great deal of attention to attain the maximum perfection in a work of art; by nature I am never satisfied with what I do, but rather I always feel that something is missing in the painting and I continue working.’ This raises several points: the danger of pursuing perfection in art, which leads inevitably to dullness; the danger of not knowing when a painting is finished; the danger of continuing to tinker with an image; and the fact that Batoni himself felt there was often something missing from his work (there was).

It might have been interesting to see some of his drawings, which were widely collected by British antiquaries on account of his skill in copying classical statuary, and helped to make his name before portraiture took over his life. (A number are reproduced in the handsome catalogue, £25 in paperback.) And given the predominance of portraiture in his career, wouldn’t this have been an exhibition more suited to the National Portrait Gallery? (Though I can’t imagine the NPG doing anything so potentially uncommercial.) I would much have preferred a show which illustrated Batoni’s influence on other artists, such as the German precursor of Neoclassicism Anton Raffael Mengs and the Scottish gentleman-painter Gavin Hamilton, and which compared Batoni with such British contemporaries as Joshua Reynolds and Allan Ramsay. Then you could have had the best of Batoni (not too much of it) with some really fine things by Ramsay (a personal favourite of mine) and Reynolds. Would such a show have been too difficult to curate or would it be considered too scholarly for the general public? It’s a mistake to talk down to gallery-goers. Our museums should be aiming for the highest and the best. Perhaps under the new directorship of Nicholas Penny the National Gallery will turn more towards the pursuit of excellence. That would indeed set a standard worth following.

More articles from: Andrew Lambirth | this section

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