Bartolozzi, the son of a goldsmith, studied painting in Florence, trained as an engraver in Venice, and began his career in Rome. In 1764 he was invited to London, where he remained for 40 years. For his patron, George III, he executed numerous engravings, including those after Hans Holbein’s drawings at Windsor. He also made many engravings of paintings by Italian masters and by his friends, the fashionable painters Giovanni Cipriani and Angela Kauffmann.

Bartolozzi was not the inventor of the so-called crayon manner of engraving, which imitated the subtleties of chalk drawings, but he made it the fashion. In 1802 he was invited to Lisbon as director of the National Academy. His son, Gaetano Stephano (1757–1821), also an engraver, was the father of Madame Vestris.