01 Work, The Art of War, Pompeo Girolamo Batoni's Allegory of Peace and War, with footnotes

Pompeo Girolamo Batoni

Allegory of Peace and War, c. 1776

Oil on canvas

136 × 99 cm (53 1/2 × 39 in.)

The Art Institute of Chicago

Pompeo Batoni’s grand portraits and numerous religious and historical commissions established him as the leading Roman painter of his day. He painted Peace and War on his own initiative, without a commission, attracting critical praise for the work’s graceful invention. It combines elements of Rococo softness and eroticism with the newly fashionable Neoclassical style. War, represented by the god Mars, is restrained by a personification of peace, who bears an olive branch. More on this painting

The allegorical painting of Italian 18th-century artist Pompeo Batoni reflects a much-needed understanding of the relationship between peace and war for a contemporary audience. Batoni depicts symbolic representations of Peace as feminine, soft, and graceful; and War as masculine, strong, and fierce. It is the nature of their communication that is the most interesting.

War is shown in full armor as if ready for battle. His armor depicts a dragon, ram, and lion, which are sometimes associated with the Chimera, a mythological creature that is an omen for misfortune. War’s sword is unsheathed and his shield is fully equipped. Darkness engulfs the figures, making this a scene fringed with a sense of coming devastation. More on this painting


Pompeo Girolamo Batoni, Batoni also spelled Battoni (born Jan. 25, 1708, Lucca, Tuscany [Italy]—died Feb. 4, 1787, Rome), Italian painter, who in his own time was ranked with Anton Raphael Mengs as a painter of historical subjects. Probably his portraits are now better known, as he invented the type of “grand tourist” portrait, very popular among the English, which shows the sitter at his ease among the ruins of antiquity. Batoni first gained fame as a painter of florid and elaborate mythological allegories. From the 1750s until his death, however, he was the preeminent portraitist in Rome. His smoothly finished ceremonial portraits of important personages combined elements of the Rococo, Bolognese classicism, and emergent Neoclassicism. More on Pompeo Batoni

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