Marcello Bacciarelli was an Italian and Polish portrait painter, court artist of the last monarch of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Stanisław August Poniatowski.

Bacciarelli studied painting in Rome, then lived in Germany. He completed his first commissions for the court of the King of Saxony, Friedrich I Augustus, in Dresden. In 1756, the artist visited Warsaw, where he met Stanisław August Poniatowski, the future King of Poland. In 1764, he traveled to Vienna, where he was introduced to Empress Maria Theresa and where he also studied portrait painting. Beginning in 1766, the artist lived permanently in Poland. In 1768, he was accepted into the Polish nobility and granted a coat of arms.

From 1776 to 1785, Bacciarelli created an art workshop at the Royal Palace in Warsaw. Bacciarelli’s paintings, which are still in the palace today, were painted during that period. He is also the author of the paintings in the palace’s Knights’ Hall and Marble Room. In 1816, the master was awarded the honorary title of professor of the Royal University of Poland. M. Bacciarelli was also an honorary member of the Academies of Fine Arts in Dresden, Vienna and Berlin. In Warsaw, he trained a number of Polish students: Józef Kosiński, Józef Reyhan, Antoni Albertrandi and others. In 1766, Bacciarelli, by order of King Stanisław August, developed a project for the creation of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, its structure and curriculum.