Pompeo Batoni

In the eighteenth century a young British gentleman on the Grand Tour wanted proof he had reached Rome, and the man to supply it was Pompeo Batoni. His studio turned out elegant full-length portraits of these travellers, posed with easy confidence among antique statues, ruins and marble dogs.

Batoni was more than a souvenir machine. He was one of Rome's leading painters, admired for his clear drawing and cool colour, and he handled grand religious and mythological commissions for popes and kings alongside the portraits.

Hundreds of his sitters survive, a whole gallery of Georgian aristocrats leaning on urns. His 'Colonel William Gordon', wrapped in tartan against a Roman backdrop, is among the most reproduced of them.