The Visitation

John Skippe of Ledbury was an amateur artist and collector, a pupil of Vernet and of the engraver, J.B. Jackson. In 1767 he travelled to Paris, Lausanne and major cities in Italy; in 1772 he again travelled to Venice, where he studied painting with Matthew William Peters, before travelling on over the next year to Sicily, Switzerland and Padua, where he copied Mantegna's Eremitani frescoes (which copies are now in the British Museum). His reputation as an artist derives largely from the sketches and watercolours that he made on his last trip, to the Levant in 1775-6, although between 1778 and 1786 he completed seventeen works of religious and mythological subjects. These were all given to friends, including Sir Joshua Reynolds, who owned a Thetis and Achilles, now lost; a Calling of Saint Matthew is now in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.

During his life, Skippe formed a notable collection of works of art, including drawings by Annibale Carracci, Domenichino, Lorenzo Lotto and Salvator Rosa. A drawing of The Flagellation that Skippe attributed to Bellini, but that is now attributed to Mantegna, is in the Courtauld Institute, London. A part of his collection was said to have been bought from a monastery in Venice.