Stefano Torelli

Stefano Torelli was an Italian Baroque painter.

Biography

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, 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. He then worked in Lübeck 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.