John Corbet of Sundorne Castle, Shrewsbury

Artist Pompeo Girolamo Batoni (Italian, 1708–1787)

Date1773

Mediumoil on canvas

Dimensionscanvas: 101.6 x 76 cm (40 x 29 15/16 in.)

ClassificationsPaintings

Credit LineTheodore T. and Mary G. Ellis Fund

Terms

Object number1974.321

Label TextA leading representative of academic painting in Italy during the eighteenth century, Pompeo Girolamo Batoni achieved success for his portraits and his mythological and historical themes. Like his contemporaries Winckelmann and Mengs, Batoni particularly admired Raphael and the antique. Together, these artists helped to generate the renewed interest in classicism that spread throughout Europe during the second half of the eighteenth century. Batoni, who was patronized by both the papacy and the Italian nobility, also enjoyed an international reputation, receiving commissions from as far away as Russia, Poland, and England. This portrait, signed and dated 1773, was painted in Rome where Batoni spent most of his life after arriving there in 1728 from his native town of Lucca. The subject of the painting is an Englishman: John Corbet of Sundorne Castle, Shrewsbury, who subsequently became Master of Warwickshire and the Shropshire Hounds. Corbet is depicted holding in his left hand an engraving of the Pantheon, a Roman temple completed in the early second century A.D. The engraving, which tells of the eighteenth century's enthusiasm for the art of antiquity, is particularly interesting since it shows the two bell towers that were added to the Pantheon by Bernini in the seventeenth century and later dismantled in the nineteenth century. As is often the case with portraits of nobility, the architectural print does not necessarily imply a specific profession such as an artist or architect, but instead is probably intended to indicate the dilettantish character of this well-dressed Englishman. ProvenanceBy descent in the family of the sitter at Sundorne Castle; purchased by Ellis Tenith, Hugh Dryden Corbet sale, Sotheby’s, London, lot 147, May 21, 1935; collection of Mrs. P. L. Warwick Bryant, Illovo, Johanesburg, by 1974; purchased by the museum, Bryant sale, Sotheby’s, London, lot 46, November 27, 1974.

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