Face value

Pompeo Batoni 1708–1787
National Gallery, until 18 May

The first impression offered by the Batoni exhibition in the Sainsbury Wing is one of dullness. I tend to do a quick reconnaissance of any show before starting the serious work of looking in detail, in order to gauge its range and extent, and my initial response was not optimistic. Why Batoni? was an early and abiding thought. I had already mentioned to an acquaintance on the way in that I had never before seen a Batoni exhibition, and a passer-by overhearing this, who happened to be leaving the gallery, remarked direly, ‘You’ll see why you’ve never seen one when you get in there.’ It was not perhaps the most auspicious of introductions.

Pompeo Girolamo Batoni was born in Lucca, the son of a goldsmith, and won early praise for his abilities in the decoration and engraving of precious metals. But a career in the applied arts was not what he wanted and at the age of 19 he took himself off to Rome to study painting. Like so many good students before him, he made an intimate study of the antique sculptures in the Vatican, and did much copying after Raphael and Annibale Carracci. He began to make a reputation as a draughtsman and won his first important commission in 1732, an altarpiece for the Gabrielli family tomb in San Gregorio al Celio. He continued with this kind of work for churches and grand decorative schemes for palaces until his vast and ambitious altarpiece for St Peter’s was exhibited in 1755 and later rejected (there had been plans to turn it into a mosaic). After this he concentrated on painting portraits, spending 30 years on an unending stream of commissions, a sort of face factory for the rich who passed through Rome.