Portrait of Pope Clement XIII Rezzonico

When Carlo Rezzonico, a Venetian, was elected pope in July 1758 and took the name Clement XIII, his first official portrait went to Anton Raphael Mengs, the German painter who was Pompeo Batoni's chief rival in Rome. Mengs followed the established formula, the pope seated at his desk and turned three-quarters. That picture belongs to the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Bologna. Batoni answered two years later with something less formal. Here the pope stands, closer to the viewer, raising his hand in blessing with a mild, kindly look, as though receiving a visitor. Batoni put his signature on a sheet of paper written out like the address on a petition, to His Holiness Our Lord Pope Clement XIII, by Pompeo Batoni who painted it, in the year 1760. The museum suggests the gentle face may be kinder than the man was. Clement placed the French Encyclopédie on the Church's list of forbidden books, and he defended the Jesuits as Catholic monarchies turned against them. Portugal had expelled the order in 1759, and in 1760, the year written on that sheet, Lisbon sent the papal envoy home.