Portrait of John Woodyeare

Pompeo Girolamo Batoni was the preeminent portrait painter in Rome in the 1700s and was celebrated for his lively, flattering likenesses. His clients included emperors and popes, but his bread and butter were people like John Woodyeare: young British gentlemen, milordi, traveling through Rome on their grand tours. Woodyeare was just twenty-two when he visited Rome and had this portrait painted. The picture omits the antique marbles and city views Batoni inserted into his later souvenir portraits and focuses instead on Woodyeare’s debonair appearance and clothes. Gentlemen like Woodyeare still carried swords, but otherwise his clothing—a gold-braided green tunic, fur-trimmed jacket, and purple sash—is fanciful and probably inspired by the exotic uniforms of the hussar soldiers of continental Europe.