Pompeo BATONI Lucca, 1708 - Rome, 1787 Allegory of Painting Oil on canvas (Original canvas) Allegory of the painting, oil on canvas (original canvas), by P. Batoni 48,50 x 38 cm (19,09 x 14,96 in.) Provenance: Seized by the American army in 1945 and returned to Countess Contanz Francken-Sierstorpff before 1959; Sale to Countess Contanz Francken-Sierstorpff and various owners, Cologne, Lempertz, 11 November 1959, no. 6 ; Private collection, Switzerland Bibliography: Anthony M. Clark, 'Pompeo Batoni Complete catalogue of his works with an Introductory text', Oxford, 1985, p. 221, no. 43 Edgar Peters Bowron, 'Pompeo Batoni. A complete catalogue of his paintings', volume I, New Haven, London, 2016, p. 42, no. 37 Commentary: Related works: Two larger studio copies: - Cassa di Risparmo di Lucca, in Lucca (64 x 48 cm), (fig. 1); - Anonymous sale; Venice, Franco Semenzato, 15 December 1991, no. 37 (64.3 x 49.3 cm) In the same sale by Countess Contanz Francken-Sierstorpff, there was 'The Cemetery' by Carl Friedrich Lessing, acquired by the Musée du Louvre in 1990. In the history of this painting, the museum states that "the Francken-Sierstorpff provenance is not proven, as it is not specified in the catalogue of this sale, which grouped together works by various owners". Built up in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the collection of the Counts of Sierstorpff at Driburg Castle in Westphalia included some important masterpieces, some of which were sold on 19 April 1889 by Rudoph Lepke in Berlin. These included Frans Francken II's 'Man at the Crossroads between Vice and Virtue' (private collection, formerly on loan to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston) and Bernard van Orley's 'Virgin and Child with Angels' (New York, Metropolitan Museum). In 1943, Countess Contanz Francken-Sierstorpff (1923 - 2006) married Hyazinth Count Strachwitz von Groß-Zauche und Camminetz (born 1920 - date unknown), the son of a colonel in the German army and a high-ranking member of the Nazi party. She was divorced in 1945. She then married the American William Dowdell Denson (1913 - 1998) in 1949, who was chief prosecutor in the trials of war criminals from the Nazi concentration camps (Dachau trials). In 1740, Pompeo Batoni developed several large-format compositions of allegories of the Liberal Arts for amateurs. The first, intended for Vincenzo Maria Riccardi in Florence (Frankfurt am Main, Städel Museum, fig. 2), includes Poetry holding a lyre and Painting depicting Apollo on a canvas placed on an easel. They are accompanied by Sculpture and Architecture. A pair was later commissioned by Count Francesco Conti in Lucca (Batoni's home town): 'Painting, Sculpture and Architecture' is set against 'Apollo, Music and Geometry' (private collection, a studio version of the second is in the Louvre). At the age of thirty-two, at the beginning of his maturity, Batoni broke with the facile visual effects of his contemporaries' Rococo style and with the French rocaille art that was then beginning to spread in Italy. He chose noble subjects that would uplift the viewer's spirit. Plastically, he took as his model the pure lines of a classicism that revived the Antiquity as much as Raphael or Guido Reni, and kept the material smooth, unctuous, with no heavy-handed effects. At the same time, he painted our picture in which the representation of the painting is isolated. Anthony Clark and Edgar Peters Bowron (op. cit) suggest that Batoni created a series of four paintings combining music, architecture and sculpture. These three originals are thought to have been lost but are known from copies (locations unknown). The subject is not just a pretext for depicting a beautiful young woman. She is holding a palette and proudly displaying her brushes, but unlike most earlier examples on this theme, she is not at work in front of a canvas and easel. Batoni places more emphasis on the intellectual and noble aspect of his art. In a way, he is following in the footsteps of Nicolas Poussin, who was more interested in intellect than in action, as he appears in his self-portraits. The pearl, the blonde plaits that come together in a curl on his chest, and the bright red coat are painted with a refinement intended for the visual pleasure of the collector, the amateur, for whom it was intended. Batoni used the pose of the young woman in our painting and the same framing for his 1765 self-portrait, now in Munich. He can be considered the last great painter of Rome in the eighteenth century. In addition to his many famous portraits of travellers on the Grand Tour, he had a major influence on the development of history painting. His classicist tendencies were echoed from 1750 to 1770, making him the precursor of neo-classicism, foreshadowing Anton Raphaël Mengs, Joseph-Marie Vien and Louis Lagrenée. At the end of his life, legend has it that he gave his palette and brushes to Jacques-Louis David. 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