Portrait of a Lady as Diana the Huntress

Batoni's practice of portraying women as Diana the Huntress reflected a widespread Rococo convention that linked aristocratic femininity with classical mythology's most independent and powerful female deity. This 1760 portrait at the Ema Klabin House Museum in São Paulo represents the dispersal of Batoni's work to South American collections, likely through twentieth-century purchase by the collector Ema Klabin. The Diana conceit — crescent moon, quiver, hunting dress — allowed women to be depicted as active, commanding figures while remaining within accepted categories of beauty and refinement. Batoni refined this format across numerous portraits of British and European women visiting Rome, each requiring a balance between personal likeness and mythological grandeur. The survival of this work in Brazil testifies to the global reach that Batoni's reputation achieved through the Grand Tour network.

Oil on canvas combining precise portraiture with mythological costume. The Diana attributes — bow, quiver, crescent, hound — would be rendered with the same careful precision Batoni applied to antique sculpture in his background settings. Warm flesh tones and silvery grey-blue drapery suggest moonlit hunting scenery.