Portrait of John Wodehouse

Pompeo Batoni was the most celebrated and patronized portraitist in eighteenth-century Rome. The son of a goldsmith, Batoni began his career painting altarpieces for wealthy patrons in Rome, but by the 1750s, his skill as a portraitist was gaining ground. His depictions of sitters casually posed out of doors, surrounded by fragments of classical art and architecture, created a huge demand for this type of portrait. British visitors to Rome began to seek him out, hoping to have a record of their Grand Tour immortalized by the artist.

Batoni's portrait of John Wodehouse, leaning with studied nonchalance on a pedestal, was painted in 1764 when the twenty-three-year-old sitter was in Rome on the Grand Tour (the painting was later inscribed with the incorrect date of 1762). Wodehouse was created 1st Baron Wodehouse of Kimberley in 1797 in recognition of his services as a Member of Parliament.

Batoni used similar poses for many of his portraits; the pose he created here for Wodehouse is used in at least twelve other examples. He portrays him in an elegant blue silk suit trimmed with abundant gold braid and buttons, his gaze active, lips slightly parted. Wodehouse carries a sword, and the black ribbon at his neck is a "solitaire," used to tie his wig. Vaguely defined Roman ruins are in the background, and beside Wodehouse is an accurate rendering of an impressive marble vase with a scene of revelry, that is today lost, but known from an early eighteenth-century publication. When Batoni initially painted the vase, he had included large handles on either side, but streamlined the finished painting by removing them, giving greater prominence to Wodehouse himself.