Stefano Tofanelli
Stefano Tofanelli (Lucca, September 26, 1752 - Lucca, November 30 1812) was an Italian painter during the Neoclassic period.
Life
He was born in in Nave, near Lucca, and as a young boy of ten he was apprenticed with a painter by the name of Antonio Luchi, also called il Diecimino, and a follower of the style of Tiepolo. By the age of 14, he worked for two years under Bernardino Nocchi, then moved to Rome in 1768, where he also worked with Niccolò Lapiccola. In Rome with Nocchi he painted frescoes for the Palazzo of the Cardinal Dropanni.[1]
He was employed by engravers to make drawings for them, and, for example, for Volpato, he drew Parnassus by Raphael and a Sibyl and two Prophets by Michelangelo, Martyrdom by Guido Reni, Aurora and Day & Night by Guercino, and a Landscape by Claude Lorraine. For the artist Morghen, he completed a drawing of Poussin's Dance of the Hours, of Raphael's Jurisprudence, Transfiguration, and Miracle of Bolsena; and of Murillo's Magdalene. He also worked for Bettelini, Fontana, and Giovanni Folo. Tofanelli also painted altarpieces, portraits, and mythological scenes. In 1781 he opened an Art School in Rome, but afterwards returned to Lucca, and in 1802 became Professor of Drawing in the University of San Frediano. Among his pupils was Michele Ridolfi.
References
- Bryan, Michael (1889). Walter Armstrong & Robert Edmund Graves, ed. Dictionary of Painters and Engravers, Biographical and Critical (Volume II L-Z). York St. #4, Covent Garden, London; Original from Fogg Library, Digitized May 18, 2007: George Bell and Sons. pp. page 577.
- ↑ Opere edite e inedite, Volumes 1-2 By marchese Cesare Lucchesini, Pages 116-118.
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