Bartolozzi, Francisco (1728-1815)

Francesco Bartolozzi was the most renowned student of Joseph Wagner in Venice, and began his career engraving plates after the designs of Italian masters. In 1764, he was invited to England to engrave the Guercino drawings in the Royal collection. There he set up his famous London workshop, utilizing the new printing technique of stipple engraving, and was enormously successful, forever linking his name to the technique. Bartolozzi recognized that stipple engraving was a very demanding method of original printmaking that was best suited for decorative works, portraits, and scenes displaying flesh tones. In his workshop, he published renderings of sentimental or mythological subjects with some well known painters, such as Francis Wheatly, Angelica Kauffmann, Cipriani and Diana Beauclerk, specifically creating designs for him to engrave. He was one of the first engravers granted a full membership to the Royal Academy, and in the last decades of the 18th century a large following of English and Italian students sat in his studio to learn his techniques.

Prints from this publication are rare