Pope Benedict XIV Presenting the Encyclical Ex Omnibus to the Comte de Stainville, Later Duc de Choiseul

A kneeling man in a gold-embroidered coat reaches out to accept a document from the Pope, and the whole painting exists to record that single handshake of paperwork. The kneeling figure is Étienne-François, Comte de Stainville, France's ambassador to Rome, and the document is the encyclical Ex omnibus, issued by Pope Benedict XIV in 1756. Behind the polite ceremony was a nasty religious quarrel: French clergy had been refusing last rites to suspected Jansenists, and the crisis was tearing at the relationship between the French crown and the church. Stainville helped broker the compromise, and he commissioned Pompeo Batoni to paint it, essentially as a very expensive diplomatic press release. It worked out well for him. Within a few years he was Duc de Choiseul and the most powerful minister in France.

Batoni painted this in Rome in 1757, at a moment when the heavy drama of the Baroque was giving way to the cooler order of Neoclassicism, and the picture sits comfortably between the two. Saints Peter and Paul float on a cloud with the dove of the Holy Spirit, an old-fashioned heavenly endorsement, while below, everything is crisp fabric and careful portraiture. Batoni made his living painting British aristocrats on their Grand Tour, and his talent for rendering silk, brocade and lace is on full display in Stainville's coat. The small detail worth finding is the pair of chubby putti at the left, wrestling with the papal tiara and the keys of Saint Peter as though they were toys. It is the one moment of playfulness in an otherwise very serious act of self-promotion.