THE VILLAGE : IN AND ABOUT IT 127 



Zoffany, having studied art in Italy, sought 

 fortune in London, like other esurient foreigners. 

 After an ordeal of poverty, he rose to note by his 

 theatrical portraits, and came for a time into the 

 sun of Court patronage. His speciality was 

 portrait groups like that which was to include 

 with the Vicar of Wakefield's family "as many 

 sheep as the painter would put in for nothing." 

 He painted one such of George III. and his 

 family, and a notable one of his brethren in the 

 then young Royal Academy, founded under this 

 King, who was an interested, if not very dis- 

 criminating, patron of art. Another of his 

 celebrated pictures, The Last Supper in which 

 St. Peter is said to be his own portrait, and for 

 the rest of the Apostles Thames-side fishermen 

 sat as models he gave for an altar-piece to the 

 church at Brentford. 



At the height of his renown, Zoffany went off 

 to Italy for years, with a commission from the 

 King to copy the Tribune of the Uffizi Gallery 

 at Florence. This task he executed well, but as 

 in his absence he had accepted other commissions 

 from Kaiser Joseph II., and the title of Baron, 

 an honour resented by George for a British sub- 

 ject, he seems to have lost the royal favour. 



