Background
Bartolozzi was born in Florence on 21 September, 1727.
Bartolozzi was born in Florence on 21 September, 1727.
He studied at the Florence Academy under Ignazio Hugford and in boyhood formed his lifelong friendship with Giovanni Battista Cipriani.
At 18 he was apprenticed for six years to Joseph Wagner, a Venice engraver.
Despite the patronage of Cardinal Bottari, Bartolozzi did not prosper in Rome. Dalton, keeper of the collection of George III, invited him to England, offering him a three-year contract to engrave a series of pictures from Guercino. In 1764 Bartolozzi left Italy forever. In London he lodged with Cipriani, and learned stipple engraving from William Ryland. He reproduced many paintings in the royal collection while under contract. Then for Boydell, a fashionable print-seller, Bartolozzi engraved many plates after paintings by Guercino, Annibale Carracci, Carlo Dolci, and his friends Cipriani, Angelica Kauffmann, and Joshua Reynolds. Most celebrated were Venus, Cupid, and Satyr (from Luca Giordano), The Lady and Child (after Sassoferrato), Mary Queen of Scots and her son James I (after Zuccaro), and Clytie (after Carracci), his masterpiece. As Engraver to the King, Bartolozzi was a person of consequence. He left England on November 2, 1802, to found the Lisbon School of Engraving, at the invitation of the prince regent of Portugal. Bartolozzi was pre-eminent among the stipple engravers of the 18th century, the golden age of English engraving. He died in Lisbon on March 9, 1815.
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 Kauffman. Bartolozzi also contributed a number of plates to Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery. He also drew sketches of his own in red chalk.
In 1765 he became a member of the Incorporated Society of Artists, and in 1769 an original member of the Royal Academy.
