Richard Boyle (1695–1753), 3rd Earl of Burlington

This 1719 portrait of Richard Boyle, 3rd Earl of Burlington, depicts the young nobleman at the beginning of a career that would make him the most influential architectural patron of eighteenth-century Britain. Burlington's passion for Palladian architecture, developed during his Italian Grand Tour, led him to champion the style that transformed English country houses, town houses, and public buildings for a century. His own Burlington House in London and his villa at Chiswick were paradigms of English Palladianism, and his patronage of architects including William Kent and Colen Campbell gave the style its most distinguished built expressions. Kneller's portrait captures Burlington at nineteen, before the full expression of his architectural influence.

Kneller captures the young Earl with the elegant refinement that would characterize his later career as an arbiter of taste, the portrait suggesting both aristocratic breeding and the cultural ambition that would define his life's work.