Pompeo Batoni (1708 - 1787) - Allegory Of Fire With Portrait Of The Customer

Pompeo Girolamo Batoni (Lucca 1708 - Rome 1787) workshop - Allegory of fire with portrait of the client

oil painting on canvas (cm. 82 x 64 - framed cm. 106 x 88)

The work, depicting an interesting male portrait, proposed as an allegory of Winter (or more simply of Fire) is attributable to a Roman school painter active in the eighteenth century, from the workshop of Girolamo Batoni (Lucca 1708 - Rome 1787).

The man, who with a deep gaze peers directly at the observer, holds an urn brazier filled with glowing embers, and is wrapped in an intense red cloak that recalls the element he is about to personify, while underneath he wears a waistcoat in brocade, alluding to its status.

The work reflects a decidedly eighteenth-century taste, which will later characterize the works of the neoclassicists, and which unites the artistic research of Pompeo Batoni, whose mature style is very close to that of his young rival Anton Raphael Mengs, unanimously recognized as the main precursor of Neoclassicism.

Of Lucca origins, Pompeo Batoni moved to Rome at the age of twenty, where in a few years he began to obtain highly prestigious commissions, with an ever-growing career that lasted over fifty years, and which saw him engaged, with the decisive collaboration of his children. , in an impressive amount of paintings to order.

Thanks to the fame that accompanied his successful career, he became one of the greatest Italian painters of the eighteenth century, painting the portraits of three popes, twenty-two European monarchs, and an infinite number of aristocrats who vied to have his services.

As you can see from the photos of the details, the work, of very good pictorial quality, is in excellent condition. The canvas is distinguished by a warm and lively color and is accompanied by a red lacquered frame with racemes and gold profiles.