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In art, the dog is often a symbol of fidelity and this particular specimen seems richly blessed with the quality. Perching on the arm of a chair, this sleek animal – probably a whippet bitch – gazes up at her master, tongue affectionately extended. The relationship between Compton and his dog reinforces this good impression. And despite his impeccably aristocratic clothing – a long-sleeved white silk waistcoat, black breeches, shoes with eye-catching red heels that match a magnificent red velvet cape lined with lynx fur – there is little of the pomposity that we find in other portraits of the period. He has painted an affable, sensitive face, caught in a reflective moment. While the prettiness or otherwise of the earl's figure here might be debated, Batoni certainly does suggest 'a good nature'.
#Velvet cloaks and capes full#
He is lively and good natur'd, with (what is a call'd) a pretty Figure.' Her observations are an incidental reminder that the Grand Tour provided many of the young men of England with a full sexual as well as a cultural education.īatoni, who prided himself on his ability to capture accurate likenesses of his sitters, aims to confirm Lady Mary's favourable assessment. We know that he met with the approval of at least one female compatriot he encountered in Italy: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who, on 31 December 1758, wrote excitedly to her friend Lady Bute, 'The young Earl of Northampton is now at Florence. At the time that this portrait was painted, he had just succeeded his uncle as earl of Northampton. Of the 265 surviving portraits from his hand, 200 represent British or Irish sitters.Ĭharles Compton, here aged 21, was in many ways a typical Grand Tourist: young, unmarried, aristocratic, classically educated. By the 1750s, Batoni's studio was almost as important a stopping-off point as the Colosseum for British aristocrats on the Grand Tour. But although, as West testifies, Batoni was admired by his fellow countrymen, it was from British tourists that he received the bulk of his commissions. The artist Benjamin West made this observation when he was in Rome between 17, at the height of Pompeo Batoni's fame. When I went to Rome, the Italian artists of that day thought of nothing, looked at nothing, but the work of Pompeo Batoni.