Pompeo Batoni was an Italian painter of the 18th century who is considered a pioneer of neoclassicism and was highly regarded for his portraits in particular. He was born in Lucca, the son of a goldsmith, and began training in the workshop of his father. As it soon became apparent that Pompeo had great talent in drawing and painting, in 1727, he started to study painting in Rome. He spent the first three years of his stay drawing and copying works of antiquity and the Renaissance. In the 1730s, Batoni was able to establish himself as a history painter and became one of the most sought-after painters in Rome. At first, he specialised in small-format cabinet pieces, but from 1740, he received numerous commissions for altarpieces and large-format histories. His clients included Pope Benedict XIV, King Frederick II of Prussia and the Russian Tsarina Catherine the Great. From the 1740s onwards, Batoni also made a name for himself as a portraitist: it was mainly British noblemen on their Grand Tour who had their portraits painted by him. Almost emblematically, the sitters were depicted in front of a view of Rome surrounded by antiquities, referring to their status as learned, cultured travellers. Despite his success, Batoni was bankrupt towards the end of his life. His widow asked the Grand Duke of Tuscany, whom Batoni had portrayed in 1769, for financial support to pay for her husband's funeral. In return, she presented him with Batoni's self-portrait, which is now in the Uffizi and served as the model for this portrait by Roland Schauls.