Biography

Conte Pietro Antonio Rotari, 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 1725-27 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 San 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, where he became known for his imaginary portraits of figures displaying various emotions, such as the so-called Portrait of a Maid (Warsaw, National Museum). Admirably composed and coloured, these works are painted with great sensitivity of observation.

He was much in demand as a portraitist, and painted royal families in Dresden and St. Petersburg. He became court painter to Empress Elizabeth I, of Russia, but spent a great deal of time painting Russian villagers and peasants. Many of these painting were originally held in collections at the Russian Academy of Art and at Catherine II's Peterhof Palace.