Stefano Tofanelli

He was born in Nave, near Lucca, and as a young boy of ten he was apprenticed with the painter Giuseppe Antonio Luchi, also called il Diecimino, who was a follower of the rococo style of Giovanni Battista Tiepolo.

With his fellow apprentice Bernardino Nocchi, then moved to Rome in 1768, where they both worked with Niccolò Lapiccola.

[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.

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.