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Colonel the Hon. William Gordon, 1765-66 (detail), by Pompeo Batoni. Picture by kind permission of the National Trust for Scotland/Fyvie Castle collection The National Trust for Scotland

THERESA THOMPSON says it's your last chance to see the National Gallery's tribute to a neglected master of portraits

Sir Humphry Morice calmly looks out at us. Cross-legged, he reclines against a tree after a hunt, one hand lightly fingering the loose folds of his silk shirt, the other resting affectionately on one of three dogs that play around him. Unusually for a Grand Tour souvenir' portrait, it only hints at its Roman countryside setting. It also has an undeniably laid-back sitter.

Not for him the lordly swagger of Col the Hon William Gordon who struts his stuff sword in hand before the ruins of the Colosseum, swathes of Huntley tartan draped toga-like around him. Facing off the statue of the goddess Roma beside him, it's as if he, the epitome of national pride abroad, owns the place or challenges it at the very least.

Nor the more balletic pose of Thomas Dundas, later 1st Baron Dundas, painted in 1763-4, who stands surrounded by some of the most celebrated ancient sculptures in Rome. He chooses to mimic the statue of the Apollo Belvedere behind him, and gesture casually towards the Sleeping Ariadne. It's a portrait so full of weighty antique references that none could doubt the sitter's grandeur.

All are outstanding portraits and all are in the National Gallery's exhibition marking the tercentenary of the birth of Pompeo Batoni (1708-1787), in his day the most sought-after painter in Rome and one of the most famous in Europe, counting popes, kings and princes among his patrons.

Around half of the 60 or so paintings on display, all in pristine condition, are portraits - the fruits of Batoni's prodigious output catering for the flood of wealthy British and Irish visitors to Rome on the Grand Tour. So successful was he that it became as much a feature of the Tour' to sit for Batoni' as to see the sites of antiquity deemed necessary to complete a young gentleman's education.

The other half of the exhibition comprises Batoni's religious and mythological works - examples of the history painting that established his reputation before he turned his attention to portraiture in the late 1750s.

Yet despite success then, today Batoni is largely neglected. Any familiarity with him is probably from artworks on the walls of stately homes. Sir Joshua Reynolds had predicted this, though as a rival portraitist one has to wonder his reason. He famously prophesied just two years after Batoni's death in 1787, that Batoni's "star would wane" and his name fall "into what is little short of total oblivion".

The National Gallery has intended to set this right with Pompeo Batoni: 1708-87 an exhibition that aims to revive Batoni's reputation, not merely as a face-painter' as curator Dawson Carr puts it, but as heir to the great Italian tradition of painters such as Michelangelo, Raphael and Carracci - and "Italy's last Old Master".

Born in Lucca in 1708, the son of a distinguished goldsmith, he began his drawing training in his father's trade. But courtesy of some local noblemen who recognised his promise he went aged 19 to study painting in Rome, and stayed there the rest of his life.

His earliest work in the exhibition, The Vision of St Philip Neri (1733-4), and two beautiful Baroque altarpieces from Lucca and Milan, show why he was so admired - superb draftsmanship, technical competence, command of light and colour, ability to handle textiles, and convey sentiment. For example, the saint's face is sensitively and scrupulously drawn, and the Christ child so lifelike it has to have been drawn from life. And though no drawings are included in this show, Carr points out that It was Batoni's practice to draw everything over and over again from life models.

From the first to the last paintings here you can see the same level of care over details, emotions and colours. He cared, too, about the overall appearance of a work, often choosing the frame. Several are in their original carved gilded frames, among them four Apostle' paintings on loan from Basildon Park, the National Trust site near Reading. There's a wealth of stories behind these portraits, to be gleaned from labels, audio-guide or catalogue. Like Alexander's, Colonel Gordon's nephew, who apparently sulked his way around the ancient glories of Rome despite a most eminent guide and chose to portray himself out hunting in what could just as well be Scotland as Italy.

Or knowing Batoni on occasion subverted his remarkable ability to capture a likeness - to divert attention for example from features a contemporary said gave Lord North "the air of a blind trumpeter" and emphasise instead the elegance of his dress. Then too, among the pomp and circumstance of the grander portraits are much-loved canine companions; the renowned animal lover, also incidentally son of a leading slave merchant, Sir Humphry Morice left £600, then a fortune, in his will to care for his horses and hounds. It makes looking into the portraits all the more enjoyable.

There are also less showy, more characterful studies such as travel writer Henry Swinburne, and the actor playwright David Garrick who went to Italy with his wife "to escape his fame" and whose portrait comes from the Ashmolean's collection.

This made me think how these Grand Tourists' enriched not only their minds but in bringing home vast numbers of souvenirs' their homes and parks as well. And that many of those portraits, statues, views and capriccios now hang in National Trust and country houses, or fill our museums.

I asked Dr Jon Whiteley at the Ashmolean Museum if they have other works by Batoni. The answer was no, but they have a painting by Batoni's great rival, German-born Anton Raphael Mengs. It's of William Fermor of Tusmore, near Bicester, and it turns out that he sat for both Mengs and Batoni on his Grand Tour.

Clearly impressed at the beauty, quality and range of the work in an exhibition "making known one of the last great painters in the Grand Tradition," Dr Whiteley added that this kind of exhibition is "just what a National Gallery should be doing".

And it was impressive, as well as eye-opening and beautiful: virtuoso paintings in a virtuoso exhibition.

Pompeo Batoni: 1708-87 is at the National Gallery until May 18. Website: www.nationalgallery.org.uk/exhibitions/batoni. The painting of William Fermor is not on show currently at the Ashmolean Museum.

10:02am Thursday 8th May 2008

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