Anton Raphael Mengs

This sitter, believed to be Henry Willoughby, later the fifth Baron Middleton, typifies the young English aristocrat whose education was crowned by a Grand Tour, an exploration of European art and architecture that culminated in Italy. Painted in the artist’s studio in Rome, the sitter is portrayed as if he were back in his own study, gazing up from his reading.

In the 1700s, Mengs was one of the most admired portraitists in Rome, and he excelled in painting subjects in elegant attire. For his young British patrons, however, he emphasized their intellectual enlightenment, suggested here by the prominence of the book.