Francesco Bartolozzi ( 1727 - 1815)

Italian artist born in Florence in 1727, the son of Cayetano Bartolozzi a jeweller. Francisco learned from his father the technique of engraving and  studied at the Academy of Florence and subsequently began his professional career in Rome. In 1764 he was invited to London, where he remained for 40 years working for his patron, George III,for whom he executed numerous engravings, including those after Hans Holbein’s drawings at Windsor. He also made many engravings of paintings by Italian masters and by his friends, the fashionable painters Giovanni Cipriani and Angelica Kauffmann. Although Bartolozzi was not the inventor of engraving in the crayon manner, which imitated chalk drawings, but he made it the fashion. In 1802 he was invited to Lisbon as director of the National Academy.