Rosalba Carriera

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Rosalba Carriera (October 7, 1675 – April 15, 1757) was a Venetian Rococo painter. In her younger years, she specialized in portrait miniatures. She later became known for her pastel work, a medium appealing to Rococo styles for its soft edges and flowery touches.

[edit] Biography

Born in Venice, Carriera was a prominent and greatly admired portrait artist of the Italian Rococco. Her family was from the lower middle-class in Venice and as a child she began her artistic career by making lace-patterns for her mother, who was engaged in that trade.

With the popularity of snuff-taking, she began painting miniatures for the lids of snuff-boxes, and was the first painter to use ivory for this purpose. Gradually this developed into portrait-painting, for which she pioneered the exclusive use of pastel. Prominent foreign visitors to Venice, young sons of the nobility on the grand tour and diplomats for example, clamoured to be painted by her^[1]. The portraits of her early period include those of Maximilian II of Bavaria, Frederick IV of Denmark, the 12 most beautiful Venetian court ladies, the "Artist and her Sister Naneta" (Uffizi), and August the Strong of Saxony who acquired a large collection of her pastels.[1]

By 1721, during her first trip abroad to Paris, portraits by her were in great demand. While in Paris, as a guest of the great amateur and art collector, Pierre Crozat. She painted Watteau, all the royalty and nobility from the King and Regent downwards, and was elected a member of the Academy by acclamation.[2] Her brother-in-law, the esteemed painter Antonio Pellegrini, married to her sister Angela, who were also in Paris that year. Pellegrini was employed by John Law, a British financier and adventurer, to paint the ceiling of the Grand Salle in Law's new Bank building. Rosalba's other sister, Giovanna, and her mother, were part of the party. Both sisters, although particularly Giovanna, helped her in painting the hundreds of portraits she was asked to do. Rosalba's diary of these 18 months in Paris which was later published by her devoted admirer, Antonio Zanetti, the Abbé Vianelli, in 1793. Her extensive correspondence has also been published^[2] She returned to Venice in 1721, visited Modena, Parma, and Vienna, and was received with much enthusiasm by rulers and courts.

In later life, she made a long journey to the court of the king of Poland where she took the Queen as her pupil. The king made a huge collection of her works which were later to form the basis of the large collection in the Altemeister Gallery in Dresden.In 1705, she was made an 'accademico di merito' by the Roman Accademia di San Luca, a title reserved for non-Roman painters.

She went then to Venice, still hugely popular and in great demand, and in effect the wage-earner of her family. Her portraits were immensely competent, almost always consisting of a bust length pose, with the body turned slightly away and the head turned to face the viewer. She had a marvellous ability to represent textures and patterns, faithfully re-creating fabrics, gold braid, lace, furs, jewels, hair and skin, and showing off all the sumptuous life-style of her rich and influential patrons.

In her person, Carriera was not a beautiful woman, her self-portraits show a homely face with a large and unshapely nose. She was known for the sweetness of her disposition and the neatness and propriety of her dress, but she was also prone to sadness and depression throughout her life, a propensity which has been attributed to the fact that she never married. In Prideaux Place, Padstow,Cornwall, there is a charming portrait by this artist of Humphrey Prideaux, the archetypal gentry son pictured on his "Grand Tour" in which a love-letter from Carriera to the sitter is reputed to have been hidden behind the frame. She had many male friends and admirers of her talent but none of them wanted to marry her.

The last years of Carriera's long life were truly tragic, as her sight, which had probably been damaged by miniature-painting in her youth, deserted her completely and she went blind. She endured two cataract operations but to no avail. She outlived all her family, spending her last years in the little house in the Dorso-Duro area of Venice where she had spent all her life.

[edit] Sources of information

Consult the biographies of Sensier, with translation of her diary (Paris. 1865), Von Hoerschelmann (Leipzig, 1908), and Malamani (Milan, 1910).

[edit] References

1. ^ Rosalba Carriera by Bernardina Sani, Umberto Allemandi & co. Ed. (1988), as reviewed by Francis Russell The Burlington Magazine (1989) p857
2. ^ Rosalba Carriera: lettere, diari, frammenti by Bernardina Sani, Leo S. Olschski ed., Firenze (1985), as reviewed by Francis Haskell in The Burlington Magazine 1987. p122-123