Catalogo do leilão dos objectos d'arte e mobiliario antigo Palacio Foz. Da Cunha and Dos Santos Liborio, Lisbon. May 3, 1901, p. 20, no. 251, ill. (installation photograph), as a portrait of François Joseph, Emperor of Austria, by François Hubert Drouais; observes that the frame was sculpted and gilded by Delafosse.
Ernst Emmerling. Pompeo Batoni: Sein Leben und Werk. Darmstadt, 1932, pp. 109–10, no. 66, as "Portrait of a Gentleman"; comments that while the picture was previously ascribed to Drouais, it is now attributed to Batoni by Voss; notes that the Antinous relief in the Villa Albani (now Villa Torlonia) and a statue of Athena are represented among the objects on the table.
Millia Davenport. The Book of Costume. New York, 1948, vol. 2, p. 729, no. 2039, ill. (cropped).
Federico Zeri. Letter. September 6, 1953, calls it a typical work of Batoni's Roman period, as indicated by the furniture; believes the sitter must be "a Roman prince, or more probably (as seems to suggest the guide to Rome) an English Lord in Grand Tour".
Anthony M. Clark. Letter to Theodore Rousseau. January 19, 1960, dates it about 1764, based on similarities to a portrait belonging to Lord Trevor, signed and dated 1764; notes that the table appears in a portrait of 1761 belonging to the Duke of Roxburghe (Floors Castle, Kelso) and that the chair reappears in a number of Batoni's portraits; believes an unfinished portrait in the Rhode Island School of Design represents the same individual; observes that Roberto Longhi, John Steegman, Ellis Waterhouse, and Luisa Marcucci have all verbally confirmed the attribution to Batoni.
Edith A. Standen. "The Grand Tour." Antiques 83 (June 1963), pp. 662–63, ill., as "not thought to represent an Englishman".
Federico Zeri and Elizabeth E. Gardner. Unpublished manuscript. [ca. 1970–80], as "Portrait of a Young Nobleman"; compare it to portraits by Batoni painted in the first half of the 1760s; identify the objects that appear in the picture and note that the same table and chair appear in other works by the artist; agree with Clark [Ref. 1960] that the same sitter is represented in the half-length portrait in the Rhode Island School of Design.
Burton B. Fredericksen and Federico Zeri. Census of Pre-Nineteenth-Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections. Cambridge, Mass., 1972, pp. 20, 528, 605.
Anthony M. Clark. "Pompeo Batoni's Cardinal Rochechouart." Museum Monographs III: Papers on Objects in the Collections of the St. Louis Art Museum. St. Louis, 1974, p. 19.
Hugh Macandrew. "A Group of Batoni Drawings at Eton College, and Some Eighteenth–century Italian Copyists of Classical Sculpture." Master Drawings 16 (Summer 1978), p. 143 n. 18, ill. (overall and detail), as "Portrait of a Young Amateur".
Francis Haskell and Nicholas Penny. Taste and the Antique: The Lure of Classical Sculpture, 1500–1900. New Haven, 1981, p. 146 n. 14, reproduce the Antinous relief (fig. 75).
Edgar Peters Bowron. Pompeo Batoni (1708–1787): A Loan Exhibition of Paintings. Exh. cat., Colnaghi. New York, 1982, p. 6, fig. 6, dates it to the early 1760s and notes that the sitter "has been thought French because of his costume"; considers the pose to reflect that of the Apollo Belevedere (Vatican, Rome); discusses the objects in the picture.
Edgar Peters Bowron. Pompeo Batoni (1708–87) and His British Patrons. Exh. cat., Iveagh Bequest, Kenwood. London, 1982, pp. 38, 80, mentions the armillary sphere, which also appears in the earlier portrait of Sackville Tufton, 8th Earl of Thanet (private collection, England).
Edgar Peters Bowron. "Le 'Portrait de Charles John Crowle' par Pompeo Batoni (1708–1787): Les 'Dilettanti' et le 'Grand Tour'." Revue du Louvre et des musées de France 35 (1985), p. 25, fig. 2, dates the picture about 1760 and, judging from the costume, identifies the sitter as a Frenchman; identifies the various objects on the table as well as the studio props, some of which he notes appear in Batoni's portrait in the Louvre of Charles John Crowle.
Anthony M. Clark. Pompeo Batoni. Oxford, 1985, pp. 32, 49, 51–52, 259, 276, 279, no. 230, 403, fig. 213, refers to the portrait in the Rhode Island School of Design (no. 229) as an apparent life study of the sitter.
Keith Christiansen. "Going for Baroque: Bringing 17th-Century Masters to the Met." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 62 (Winter 2005), p. 6, fig. 3 (color).
Edgar Peters Bowron and Peter Björn Kerber. Pompeo Batoni: Prince of Painters in Eighteenth-Century Rome. Exh. cat., Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. New Haven, 2007, pp. 84, 148, 172, 190 n. 186, p. 204 n. 28, p. 207 n. 111, fig. 81 (color).
