Portrait of Cardinal Jean-François Joseph de Rochechouart

Cardinal Jean-François Joseph de Rochechouart (1708–1777) was a French ecclesiastic from one of France's oldest and most illustrious noble families. Batoni's 1762 portrait at the Saint Louis Art Museum captures him at fifty-four, during what would prove the penultimate decade of his life. French cardinals visiting Rome for ecclesiastical business were natural candidates for Batoni's studio, combining the painter's ecclesiastical portrait tradition with his Grand Tourist practice. The Saint Louis Art Museum's acquisition of this work places a French cardinal portrait in a major American civic collection, reflecting the wide dispersal of European ecclesiastical portraiture. The Rochechouart family's prominence in French church and court life made this a significant commission within the painter's extensive body of clerical portraiture.

Oil on canvas with the formal vocabulary of cardinal portraiture: scarlet robes, cardinal's hat, and a setting conveying ecclesiastical dignity. Batoni's precise rendering of the intense scarlet of cardinal dress is one of the technical challenges he handled with consistent mastery. The face receives individual characterization within the formal constraints of a high ecclesiastical portrait.