A truly international court artist, Jacopo Amigoni’s career straddles four of the most important artistic centres of eighteenth century Europe: starting in his native Venice, on to the Bavarian ducal court in Munich, through to London’s fashionable aristocratic circles, and finally ending at the Bourbon court in Madrid.

Combining cool elegance with polite sensuality, his painting Apollo and the Muses encapsulates the sophisticated and decorative appeal of Amigoni’s art, the foundation of his great success. On the basis of its German provenance – the picture is first documented in the Goldschmidt collection, which left Berlin in the early 1930s and considering its dimensions, which do not correspond to a standard English size,...