Francesco Bartolozzi - Life

Life

Bartolozzi was born in Florence. He was originally destined to follow the profession of his father, a gold- and silver-smith, but he manifested so much skill and taste in designing that he was placed under the supervision of two Florentine artists, including Ignazio Hugford and Giovanni Domenico Ferretti who instructed him in painting. After devoting three years to that art, he went to Venice and studied engraving. He particularly admired the work of Joseph Wagner. His first productions in Venice were plates in the style of Marco Ricci, Zuccarelli, and others, while working for Wagner, which began to draw attention. He then moved for a short time to Rome, where he completed a set of engravings representing frescoes at Grottaferrata by Domenichino depicting the life of St Nilus. He soon returned to Venice and left for London in 1764.

He lived in London for nearly forty years. He produced an enormous number of engravings, including Clytie after Annibale Carracci, and of the Virgin and Child, after Carlo Dolci. A large proportion of them are from the works of Cipriani and Angelica Kauffmann. Bartolozzi also contributed a number of plates to Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery. He also drew sketches of his own in red chalk. Soon after arriving in London, he was appointed "Engraver to the King" with a salary of £300 a year. He was elected a founding member of the Royal Academy in 1768, and in 1802 became the founding President of the short-lived Society of Engravers.

Bartolozzi was not the inventor of the so-called crayon manner of engraving, which imitated the subtleties of chalk drawings, but he made it the fashion.

In 1802, Bartolozzi accepted the post of director of the National Academy of Lisbon, the city where he died. His son Gaetano Stefano Bartolozzi, born in 1757, was also an engraver, and the father of Madame Vestris.