Room 37

A portrait could come home from Italy with a traveller, just as a painted view could preserve a city they had visited. Pompeo Batoni’s Portrait of Richard Milles belongs to that world of journeys, study and collecting. Artists travelled too. Canaletto worked in England, and his nephew Bernardo Bellotto took Venetian view painting to courts across central Europe. Bellotto’s The Fortress of Königstein from the North gives architecture and landscape a commanding scale. Compare the space around a traveller in a portrait with the buildings in a view. Both kinds of painting could tell an owner’s guests about the places and cultural experiences they wanted to be associated with.