Roberto Bompiani was an Italian painter of the 19th century. From a young age, he enrolled as a student at the Accademia di San Luca in Rome and won a prize from the academy for his drawings at the age of 15. In 1837 and 1838, he was awarded by the Academy in the categories of painting and nude drawing. His academic purism found great favour with his commissioners: in 1854, he executed two history paintings for the Borghese family; in 1855, he painted fifteen portraits of Blesseds for a patron in Spain; and, in 1858, he produced allegorical paintings of the twelve hours of the day for a ballroom of Queen Victoria. In 1862, Bompiani spent several months in London in his capacity as a representative of the Papal States for the Universal Exhibition. In the early 1870s, he frescoed the cathedral of Valetta in Malta, after which he created several works for the cathedral and opera house of Santiago de Chile. Bompiani also devoted himself to archaeological themes and, in the years before his death, increasingly to watercolour painting.