ILLEN MEMORIAL ART MUSEUM BULLETIN )BERLIN COLLEGE FALL 1972 , ( ALLEN MEMORIAL ART MUSEUM BULLETIN VOLUME XXX, NUMBER 1 FALL 1972 Contents Pompeo Batoni's Portrait of John Wodehouse by Anthony M. Clark ----- 2 The Dating of Creto-Venetian Icons: A Reconsideration in Light of New Evidence by Thalia Gouma Peterson - 12 A Sheet of Figure Studies at Oberlin and Other Drawings by Daniele da Volterra by Paul Barolsky ----- 22 Notes Oberlin-Ashland Archaeological Society 37 Baldwin Lecture Series 1972-73 37 Loans to Museums and Institutions 37 Exhibitions 1972-73 40 Friends of Art Film Series - - - - 41 Friends of Art Concert Series 41 Friends of the Museum ----- 42 Published three times a year by the Allen Art Museum, Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio. $6.00 a year, this issue $2.00; mailed free to members of the Oberlin Friends of Art. Printed by the Press of the Times, Oberlin, Ohio. 1. Pompeo Batoni, John Wodehouse Oberlin Pompeo Batoni's Portrait of John Wodehouse In March, 1761, Giovanni Battista Tiepolo wrote Count Algarotti regarding sketches of his for a commission for S. Marco in Rome: 'You then do me the pleasure of sending me the news of Batoni's indulgence about the small sketches. ."' One wonders what Raphael Mengs, just finishing his Villa Albani ceiling, thought of Tiepolo's sketches. Three decades younger than Tiepolo, Mengs was now a famous painter whose opinion would have carried weight. Both Batoni (1708-1787) and Mengs were favored by the new Venetian pope, Clement XIII (whom they painted in 1760 and 1758 respectively), and by this pope's dis­ tinguished family; also, both artists at least indirectly can be connected with the Venetian church in Rome, S. Marco at Palazzo Venezia. Batoni, a decade younger than Tiepolo, apparently admired the Venetian paint­ er. Mengs sailed from Italy in October, 1761 to become court painter at Madrid, to be followed by Tiepolo the next year. Mengs' absence from Rome until 1771, and again from 1773 to 1777 (he died in Rome in 1779), was not unfavorable to Pompeo Batoni, who remained unrivalled as the most famous native Italian master. From the 1740's Batoni had been the leading painter in Rome. By 1754 most connoisseurs considered him the finest painter in Italy and from this year he had become also Italy's prime portrait painter. In 1759 Winckelmann, Mengs' friend, gave his extraordinarily high praise to Batoni's Wyndham portrait, and, despite the slightly later puffs of "Ella poscia mi fa il piacere di avanzarmi le Notizie del Compatimento datto dal sig. Battoni di Roma alii piccioli Modelli . ." (P. G. Molmenti, Tiepolo, Paris, 1911, 24 and 41). Mengs' more "modern" portraits, the German artist was never truly to surpass the Italian as the portraitist. Yet, as if shepherding Batoni away from prominence in subject painting and towards a more exclusive trade in portraits (to the advantage of Mengs), Winckelmann, in January 1761, tore Batoni's latest historical masterpiece, The Departure of Hec­ tor, to pieces.2 The handsome Batoni portrait at Oberlin (fig. I)3 bears the inscribed date of 1762, and this is possibly correct for its commission. The subject is also given in the inscription although this cannot be dated earlier than 1797 when John Wodehouse (1741-1834), a Baronet's son, was created 1st Baron Wodehouse of Kimbcrley in appreciation of his serv­ ice as Member of Parliament for Norfolk (1784-1797). Wodehouse appears as a stylish and prosperous twenty-one year old on the Grand Tour; his main memorial, aside from his title, is the Batoni portrait. I know little else about him excepting a September, 1771 report from Rome that a certain (possibly the same) "Mr. Wodehouse is still in Sicily,"4 and his presence in Rome, as we shall see, in 1764. Wodehouse is shown in the portrait at an imaginary site in the Roman Campagna, leaning on a plinth which supports the pedestal of a marble vase with a Bacchic relief otherwise unknown to me. He wears a sword, the hilt of which is silver parcel-gilt, and a suit of deep ultra­ marine with gold trim, fresh lace, and a loose black cravat. Wodehouse also wears his own hair, mouse-colored except as it moves blonde into the light and brown into deeper shadow. The face is lively and fleshy, pink and healthy, and looks away, rather ironical and appetitive, with blue eyes under cocked blonde brows. It is a secure and telling likeness of a self-assured, mature but very young man. Although there is ob­ vious accuracy in the likeness one can tell very little about the man, who is shown favorably and typically. The typicality seems to me to depend on what Professor Gombrich might wish to call a "conceptual" rather than an "evocative" presentation; on Batoni's accurate flattery; and on Wodehouse's youth. Subtly, learnedly and genially wrought, the portrait has force and animation but avoids "psychological depth" or at least skepticism. The vivid and careful craft may itself possess 2 For a more detailed account of Batoni's career and his portrait practices, see the author's essay in: Pompeo Batoni, Catalogo della Mostra, Lucca 1967, pp. 23-50. 3 Ace. No. 70.60. Oil on fabric, 53W"x38Vi" (138x100 cm.). Sale in London (Sotheby), December 2, 1964, lot 10, the property of the Earl of Kimberley (bought in?); Ferdinando Peretti, London. 4 Letter from James Byres in Rome to Sir William Constable, 30 Sept., 1771, in East Riding Co. Records Office, Beverly, Yorks. I owe this reference to the kind­ ness of Mr. G. W. Beard. 2. Pompeo Batoni, Georgina, Countess Spencer Courtesy of the Earl Spencer, Althorp 3. Pompeo Batoni, David Garrick Ashmolean, Oxford psychological depth, and somehow one does not feel that Wodehouse bought only a fashionable or frivolous portrait. We know the material origins of the Oberlin portrait as far as its sitter, artist and date are concerned. We also know that it was on view in Batoni's showroom on the 6th of May 1764, in the artist's palace several blocks from Piazza di Spagna where it was painted. On that date another British Grand Tourist, James Martin, recorded in his travel diary:5 "wt. to Battoni's the Portrait Painter & saw7 some very strong Likenesses of Lady Spencer, Mrs. Macartey, Mr. Garrick, Mr. Wod- house [sic], ac [etc.]. He has also painted an excellent Picture represent­ ing Hercules between Virtue & Pleasure." On May 7th Martin went about Rome (and back to Batoni's) with Lord Exeter, William Chambers the architect, Abbe Grant, and others including Wodehouse. The "Macartey" portrait is lost; presumably it was of a Macarthy who accompanied his mother and Lord Exeter to Italy in 1763-64. The seated portrait of Georgina, Countess Spencer, signed and dated 1764, exists and is the same size as the Wodehmtse (fig. 2). The portrait of David Garrick (fig. 3) dates also to 1764, and hangs in the Ashmolean Museum. It is a smaller, more particular likeness than either Wode- house's or Countess Spencer's. The great actor's right hand, hanging over an illustrated volume of Terence, may be compared with Wode- house's left hand dangling over the plinth: they are contemporary cousins. Finally, the Hercules at the Crossroads (fig. 4) which Martin saw is the large picture then in progress (it is signed and dated 1765) and now in the Hermitage. The young English buck at Oberlin has obviously chosen a road different from that of the introspective hero. Batoni would have produced over a dozen full- and three-quarter length portraits in both 1762 or 1764 and about a half-dozen half-lengths. The latter would not necessarily have been cheaper — most of them were even more carefully detailed and more exquisitely fine than the Garrick. The superb 1762 three-quarter length Cardinal de Roche- chouart formerly in the New York Historical Society, or the 1764 half- length Archbishop Mansi, and the 1764 three-quarter length Edward, Duke of York, are all of the more studied, highly wrought variety which Batoni reserved for his grandest customers — and which was less appli­ cable to Wodehouse than to the Countess Spencer and David Garrick. The price, according to size, was probably the same for all customers, although the "fringe benefits" from the grandees, both direct and in­ direct, were considerable. I owe this unpublished information to the very great generosity of Mr. Brinsley Ford. There are many varieties of Batoni poses and there is no dichotomy between what can be termed the more characteristic and the more in­ formal poses. Though popes and princes are raised occasionally to iconic heights, it is usually the attention and craft refinement that overwhelms the spectator before their portraits, and they are carefully observed and characteristically but quite informally posed. The matter of grace, so carefully arranged in eighteenth century art, perhaps obscures this point (as in the Countess Spencer's portrait), but it is nevertheless in Batoni faithful and true to experience. Although his portraits are more idealized and typical than those of the slightly more hard-boiled contemporary French and later British portrait painters, Batoni, with so many vacationing customers on his hands, was necessarily a master of informal poses. The credit due him for "natural" poses in outdoors or "realistic" settings has, however, been somewhat exaggerated, owing to ignorance of his Roman predecessors. Also, Batoni quite obviously depended on stock poses, which he handled with considerable social discretion (cleverly gauging the tolerance and ignorance of the consumer), although a computer could dispose of them in a wink.