Portrait of Pius VI

Giovanni Angelo Braschi was elected pope on 15 February 1775, after a conclave of more than four months, and as Pius VI he stepped straight into the Holy Year his predecessor had proclaimed. He sent for Pompeo Batoni almost at once. This canvas was left unfinished, and the museum regards it as a study, quite likely painted from life, for the official portrait that is now in the Museo di Roma. In that version the sheet of paper in the pope's left hand carries a dedication signed by Batoni and dated 1775.

The attribution has shifted. When the picture entered the Pinacoteca in 1932 it was given to Anton Raphael Mengs, the German painter who competed with Batoni for the great commissions in Rome, and it was later changed to Batoni. The museum now credits Batoni together with his school, allowing for other hands from the studio. The sitter went on to enlarge the Vatican's sculpture museum, named Pio-Clementino after Clement XIV and himself, and he died in 1799 at Valence, a prisoner of the French.