Un tea con Batoni

Tea with Batoni.
Anecdotes, Dwellings and Collections of the English on the Grand Tour

Pompeo Batoni (1708-1787), who lived during one of the most enlightened and complicated periods of European history – the 1700’s, became “the most celebrated Italian painter of his time”.
He was born in Lucca, the son of a goldsmith, in 1708, a year after the creation of Great Britain through the union of Scotland and England, and he died on the year of another birth: that of United States of America (1787).
From 1727 onwards, already and reasonably a famous historical and religious painter, Batoni transformed his studio in Rome – his city of adoption – into a friendly meeting place for Grand Tour noblemen and soon grew to the be most famous portraitist in Europe. A portrait by the painter from Lucca became a must for princes and prelates, aristocrats and the Pope himself. It was a true fashion of the time of overseas Englishmen, Scotsmen and Hirishmen, to be portrayed in the midst of classical ruins much loved and studied at Oxford University, while downed in splendid, brightly-colored and fully-detailed clothes.
Batoni records the faces and characters of the young British upper class, producing a magnificent art gallery and collection of portraits that are still visible for the most part in wonderful English countryside residences.
This book wishes to invite readers to embark on a journey in the opposite sense, on a grand tour in the countryside dwellings of the milordi who commissioned over two hundred portraits paintings from Pompeo Batoni. A journey driven by the curiosity to seek answers to a range of questions: who were they? How did they live? What sort of tastes did they have? While enjoying, of course, a good cup of tea. The plant that changed a good part of their history.

pp. 160, 17×24

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