Italian painter , (b. 1707, Verona, d. 1762, St. Petersburg) Italian painter. His artistic career began as a youthful distraction, but his talent quickly became apparent, and he entered the studio of Antonio Balestra in Verona, remaining there until he was 18. He spent the years 1725-7 in Venice and then moved c. 1728 to Rome, where he stayed for four years as a student of Francesco Trevisani. Between 1731 and 1734 he studied with Francesco Solimena in Naples before returning to Verona, where he set up his own studio and school. His most notable early independent works are multi-figured altarpieces (e.g. the Four Martyrs, 1745; Verona, church of the Ospedale di S Giacomo), which emulate 17th-century Roman and Neapolitan works. However, he also studied the smaller, more intimate paintings of Roman Baroque artists, and these influenced his later works. He fell victim to the wanderlust that appears to have been endemic to 18th-century Venetian painters, and c. 1751 he travelled to Vienna, where he was able to study works by Jean-Etienne Liotard, whose clean pictorial smoothness impressed him. He later moved to Dresden  Related Paintings of Pietro Antonio Rotari :. | Portrait of Grand Duchess Yekaterina Alexeyevna | Countess A.M. Vorontsova | Sleeping Girl | Portrait of Francesco Bartolomeo Rastrelli | A Girl in a Blue Dress |
Related Artists:
Felix Hilaire Buhot
French, 1847-1898
George Scharf
1820-1895 British art critic, was born in London, the son of George Scharf, a Bavarian miniature painter who settled in England in 1816 and died in 1860. He studied in the schools of the Royal Academy. In 1840 he accompanied Sir Charles Fellows to Asia Minor, and in 1843 acted as draughtsman to a government expedition to the same country. After his return he devoted himself with great industry and success to the illustration of books relating to art and antiquity, of which the best known are Macaulay's Lays of Ancient Rome (1847); Milman's Horace, (1849); Kugler's Handbook of Italian Painting (1851); and Dr Smith's classical dictionaries. He also engaged largely in lecturing and teaching, and took part in the formation of the Greek, Roman and Pompeian courts at the Crystal Palace. He acted as art secretary to the great Manchester Art Treasures Exhibition of 1857, and in that year was appointed secretary and director to the newly founded National Portrait Gallery. The remainder of his life was given to the care of that institution. Scharf acquired an unrivalled knowledge of all matters relating to historic portraiture, and was the author of many learned essays on the subject. In 1885
John Russell
English Painter, 1745-1806,English pastellist, painter, writer and astronomer. His father, also called John Russell (1711-1804), was a bookseller, printseller and amateur artist. Russell was educated at Guildford grammar school and won premiums from the Society of Artists for drawings in 1759 and 1760. He was apprenticed to Francis Cotes and set up his own practice in 1767. In 1770 he entered the Royal Academy Schools, London, winning the silver medal for figure drawing. He exhibited at the Society of Artists in 1768 and annually at the Royal Academy from 1769 to 1806. He was elected ARA in 1772 and RA in 1788, when he became Crayon Painter to King George III and to George, Prince of Wales. He painted some rather stilted portraits in oil