Stefano Torelli

Subjects and genres recorded for the work are portrait. Places of work recorded in the authority are Dresden. Employment is recorded with Imperial Academy of Arts. Positions recorded include court painter. Work by Stefano Torelli is recorded in the collections of Finnish National Gallery, Hermitage Museum, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Tretyakov Gallery and St.

• Born — 24 October 1704 • Died — 22 February 1780 • Birthplace — Bologna, Papal States • Place of death — Saint Petersburg, Russian Empire • Known for — Painting • Movement — Baroque

Stefano Torelli was born in Bologna on 24 October 1704. He studied first under his father, Felice Torelli, and then under Francesco Solimena. According to Giampietro Zanotti, he executed an altarpiece, St. Ignatius of Loyola Driving out Demons from the Possessed, for the Jesuit church of Sant'Ignazio, Bologna, although it was removed because of a certain ‘suavity and elegance prejudicial to the purity of their noviciate’; the picture was then acquired by the Marchese Sanvitale at Parma. Zanotti further noted that Torelli moved to Venice, where he painted ‘in both fresco and oil with much honour’. Luigi Crespi noted that by the time of his writing (the 1750s), Torelli was in Dresden, where he met Crespi in 1753. Torelli worked for the Elector Frederick-Augustus II, the future King of Poland, Augustus III, and executed altarpieces, ceiling paintings and portraits, many destroyed in the Seven Years' War. He painted figures in Canaletto's twenty-nine views of Dresden (1741). He then worked in Lübeck (1759–61) and Saint Petersburg, where he painted ceilings in the Winter Palace, and some portraits, among the latter one of the Empress Elizabeth in armor. In 1762 he was appointed Professor of the Imperial Academy of Arts. He was a clever caricaturist, and etched a few plates. He died in Saint Petersburg on 22 January 1780. His son Antonio Torelli was also a painter.

• Illustration — Portrait of Catherine II, c. 1760 • Illustration — Anastasia Sokolova, wife of José de Ribas • Illustration — Anna Chernysheva • Illustration — Charlotte Amalie • Illustration — Anna Chernysheva, 1762 • Illustration — Semën Kirillovič Naryškin • Illustration — Grand Duke Pavel Petrovich • Illustration — Egmont von Chasôt • Illustration — Diana and Endymion