(1696 - 1769)
Carlo Francesco Rusca was born in 1696 in Lugano, within the Italian-speaking area of Ticino in southern Switzerland. He studied under the Italian painter and etcher Giacomo Amigoni (c.1685-1752) and was active from 1722 until his death in 1769. He worked in numerous European cities, including Venice, Kassel, Hanover, Brunswick and Milan. He is known to have been in London in 1739, when his portrait of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (née Pierrepont) was painted, indicating that Lady Mary sat for him before she left England for Italy later that year. Rusca died in Milan in 1769.
