Pietro Antonio Rotari

(Verona, 1707 - San Pietroburgo, 1762)

Pietro Rotari initially studied in his native Verona with Antonio Balestra before leaving in 1727 for Rome and Naples, where he first entered Francesco Trevisani's studio and then Francesco Solimena's. In 1734 he returned to his home town, concentrating on the production of historical and religious paintings, genres that gave him international fame. In 1741, Rotari travelled to Vienna, where he met Jean-Etiènne Liotard, by whom he was profoundly influenced. While in Dresden in the service of Frederick Augustus III, Rotari received an invitation from Empress Elisabeth of Russia to go to St. Petersburg as the first court painter. Arriving in Russia in 1756, Rotari soon amassed a large fortune and a visit to his richly furnished house became a must for high-ranking visitors to the city. Although he continued to work as a history painter, in St. Petersburg Rotari developed the genre now predominantly associated with his name: small-scale paintings depicting idealised heads, in which he was able to transfer the emotions of boys and girls with delicacy and studied artificiality.