Pietro Rotari

Count Pietro Antonio Rotari ( born September 30, 1707 Verona, † August 31 1762 in St. Petersburg ) was an Italian painter, active in Italy, Vienna, Dresden, and as a court painter in St. Petersburg, where he was known mainly for portraits was.

Life

Rotari was born in Verona, the son of a gusituierten family and studied painting just to pass the time. When his teacher Antonio Balestra (1666-1740) but recognized his talent, he hit a career as a painter. He was until 1725 at Balestra and then went two years after Venice, where he copied paintings by Titian and Paolo Veronese. From 1728 he was in Rome with Francesco Trevisani ( 1656-1746 ), where he among other things, the study of antiquity devoted himself. 1731 he went to Naples to Francesco Solimena ( 1657-1747 ), where he remained until 1734. After that he lived again in Verona, where he created a reputation in its own studio and with its own school in particular as a painter of religious paintings. Were particularly well-known at that time his preaching (L Annunciation ) in Guastalla and his birth of the Virgin in Padua. Four martyrs in Verona ( 1745, Ospedale di San Giacomo ) 1749 him for his services the title of Count ( Conte) was awarded. Later he went over Vienna ( about 1751 ) to Dresden (1752 or 1753), where he was a popular painter at the court of the Saxon Elector and Polish King Augustus III. After he had tried in vain to apply to court in France in 1756, he went to Saint Petersburg. He was court painter there after he had great success with the painting of Empress Elisabeth. Even when Peter III and Catherine II, he was in favor - he portrayed them and later bought his portrait series, human passions represented (so he was already known in Dresden), and thus decorated a room in Peterhof from. From Rotari also portrait series of women, children and men from the Russian people and numerous other portraits of people of Russian society and the court date. 50 of these portraits of women from Russia handed over the Empress Elizabeth of Russia's Academy of Arts and 360 were in the Cabinet of the modes and Graces in Peterhof, and Catherine II bought more ( she earned 14,000 rubles for the largest part of Rotaris discount). He also painted a few large historical paintings in Saint Petersburg.

In 1762 he was sent to Courland, to restore the paintings in the palaces of Jelgava and Ruhental. He died in August 1762 in Saint Petersburg to a clogged colic, which he had tried in vain to treat yourself.

He was one of the teachers of Russian portrait painter Fyodor Stepanovich Rokotov and Alexei Petrovich Antropov.

Gallery

Countess Worontzowa, Hermitage

La Penitente ( The Penitent )

Maria Antonia Walpurgis

Saxon Prince

Friedrich Christian of Saxony

Barbara Petrovna Scheremetewa, 1760

Sleeping Girl