P ompeo Batoni, the most prominent portraitist in eighteenth-century Rome, produced this supremely elegant personification of Painting in 1772, toward the end of his long and internationally acclaimed career. Infusing the allegorical representation with elements of portraiture, Batoni depicted his lifelong muse with an ineffable beauty, an impression achieved through his refined draftsmanship, delicate modelling, and sensitive coloring.

Crowned with an all’antica gold diadem, Batoni’s blue-eyed subject wears a hunter green dress, its neckline and sleeves embellished with strands of large pearls. The chestnut mantle that envelops her is inscribed with the artist’s signature and the work’s date (“AN. 1772”) and site of execution (“ROMAE”). The woman holds a palette and smattering of brushes and, in accordance with the description of Painting in Cesare Ripa’s Iconologia, a pendant mask hangs from a gold chain around her neck, suggesting that painting, like drama, seeks to imitate life.¹ Intently fixing her gaze beyond the picture frame (as if on a model), she appears poised to apply a touch of red paint to an unseen canvas, an active engagement with the tools of the artist’s profession that recalls Batoni’s own self-portrait executed in 1772.²

The painting’s half-length format, used by Batoni to great effect in his popular portraits of British and European Grand Tourists, imbues the image with a striking intimacy. Taking full advantage of portraiture’s evocative potential, Batoni describes the woman’s features with enough specificity to endow her with a personal presence,³ but one tempered by the timelessness of allegory. Robert Evren has even suggested that the work may be a portrait historié of Margaret Murray (1746-1784), Marchesa d’Accoromboni, whom the artist depicted a few years later in a similar costume.⁴ Yet the woman’s appearance is more likely an idealized composite—in the vein of Raphael’s Galatea—inspired by contemporary beauties, but ultimately an artistic fantasy.

Batoni produced depictions of female personifications of the Arts at several points during his career. His circa 1738-1740 allegorical depiction of The Fine Arts (fig. 1), laid the foundation for his later representations of the subject.⁵ Alongside Architecture (with a compass and plane) and Sculpture (with a hammer and chisel), fair-haired Painting at center holds a palette and brushes. An unfinished painting of Hercules appears on the easel behind her and, as in the present work, a theatrical mask hangs from a gold chain around her neck. In both 1740 and 1775, Batoni produced independent half-length depictions of Painting, perhaps conceived as components of quartets of the four arts.⁶

The presence of an unidentified collection mark with Cyrillic characters (“жаѫ”) at lower right suggests that the present painting was either commissioned by a Russian patron or acquired by a Russian collector. Indeed, the success of Batoni’s Portrait of Count Kirill Grigorjewitsch Razumovskyin⁷ led to a number of significant commissions from Russian aristocrats, including Empress Catherine the Great and her son, Emperor Paul I.

¹ Iconologia overo Descrittione dell’imagini universali, Rome 1593, p. 211. “Tiene la Catena d’oro, onde pende la Maschera, per mostrare, che l’Imitatione è congiunta con la Pittura inseparabilmente.”

² Bowron 2016, vol. II, p. 455, cat. no. 360, reproduced.

³ Indeed, so portrait-like is the work that a conservator once painted out Painting’s defining attributes. See Bowron 2000, p. 358.

⁴ Evren 2023, p. 115. For Batoni’s portrait of Murray, see Bowron 2016, vol. II, pp. 529-530, cat. no. 414, reproduced.

⁵ Bowron 2016, vol. I, pp. 35-36, cat. no. 31, reproduced.

⁶ See Bowron 2016, vol. I, p. 42, cat. no. 37, reproduced; vol. II, p. 500, cat. no 396, reproduced.

⁷ Sold Sotheby’s, London, 9 July 2008, lot 83.