Luigi Premazzi, born 3 January 1814, Milan, was an Italian painter, mainly of watercolour vedute, a highly detailed, usually large-scale painting of a cityscape or some other vista.
Premazzi attended the Brera Academy of Fine Arts and then the private school run by Giovanni Migliara. His early watercolours, based on the works of his master, were produced for the lithographic industry. His body of work is characterised by a repertoire of urban views (vedute) produced in accordance with the dictates of perspective painting.
While most of these are set in Milan, other Italian cities were also featured in later years. His smooth, precise painting also shows the influence of his contemporary Luigi Bisi in its descriptive focus on architectural detail. He presented work regularly at the exhibitions of the Società Promotrice di Belle Arti in Turin from 1842 to 1848 as well as those of the Brera Academy. Having moved to Saint Petersburg around 1850, later becoming a teacher at the Imperial School of Fine Arts there in 1861. Frequent stays in the Caucasus and the Middle East provided new subjects for his paintings, which he continued to send to Italian exhibitions, where they aroused wonder and curiosity.
In 1859 he was commissioned to paint the rooms of the Catherine Palace, a Rococo palace in Tsarskoye Selo, 30 km south of St. Petersburg, that was used as the summer residence of the Russian tsars.
He painted the interiors of the Winter Palace, which served as the official residence of the Russian Emperors from 1732 to 1917.
He also painted the Interiors of the New Hermitage, St Petersburg, which was founded in 1764 by Empress Catherine the Great.
In the 1870s he was commissioned to paint the luxurious waterfront Mansion of Baron Stieglitz.
Luigi Premazzi died December 17, 1891, aged 77, in Constantinople. He is remembered for his paintings of beautiful interiors and landscapes.