CARRIERA, Rosalba

This painting belongs to a series of four representing The Four Seasons.

A sister-in-law of Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini, Rosalba Carriera achieves the same airy lightness of touch as her relative in her portraits. These were done in pastel and in them she explored the finest shadings of her subjects’ characters, the most fleeting of their moods. Thus, without falling either into the dangers of the encomiastic portrait or of the documentary, Rosalba matches the immediacy of pastel technique to the freshness of her psychological and social penetration of her subjects, offering an unrivalled picture of the society of her time. In the Elderly Lady the mature beauty of the noblewoman and her serene good-natured existence are conveyed with incomparable skill.

Typical of her work is the portrait of Cardinal Melchior de Polignac with its superb rendering of the physical features of the subject, catching immediately the wilful character of the prelate.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 10 minutes):

Antonio Vivaldi: Concerto for recorder in A minor

A sister-in-law of Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini, Rosalba Carriera achieves the same airy lightness of touch as her relative in her portraits. These were done in pastel and in them she explored the finest shadings of her subjects’ characters, the most fleeting of their moods. Thus, without falling either into the dangers of the encomiastic portrait or of the documentary, Rosalba matches the immediacy of pastel technique to the freshness of her psychological and social penetration of her subjects, offering an unrivalled picture of the society of her time.

In the Elderly Lady the mature beauty of the noblewoman and her serene good-natured existence are conveyed with incomparable skill.

Trained as a miniaturist, Rosalba Carriera became very famous and sought-after throughout Europe, and especially in Paris where she was highly esteemed by Watteau for her portraits in pastels. This technique, which she used exclusively, was particularly suitable for the haziness and lightness of her pictures and also for her mawkish obligingness towards her sitters. Her portraits are a typical example of what Diderot called “flatterie”, that is, they tend towards over-embellishment and idealization.

As well as her portraits, Carriera produced a series of works with allegorical and religious subjects. These included the series of cardinal virtues and the four seasons, and some individual works.

Carriera began her career as a lace-maker, then went on to paint ivory miniatures to decorate caskets. When she switched to pastel technique and the portrait genre, she met with great success. In 1720 she was invited to Paris. and became a favourite of Europe’s monarchs and elite. Her popularity was due to her delicate, sensitive approach, and her outstanding ability to depict character.

Faustina Bordoni Hasse was a famous singer, a contralto. In her portrait, Rosalba Carriera allowed all the energy of the singer’s irrepressible personality to emerge.

Sartori was a printmaker, active in Venetian publishing; the mask identifies her with that city. This informal portrait is a sensuous marvel of brilliant hues and varied structures.

Le Blond was the French consul in Venice. The courtly clothing and the facial expression effectively portray the bureaucrat connected to official ruling circles.

Rosalba Carriera carefully emphasised the deep spirituality of her subject in this portrait of the nun, who died in 1734 amid rumours of sanctity.

This small pastel drawing probably portrays one of the children of the French consul general Le Blond. The portrait reveals an image of exquisite grace and gentleness.

The sitter of this vigorous, half-length Portrait of a Gentleman in Red is probably Count Wackerbarth, who was in Venice in 1739-40 accompanying Prince Frederick Christian of Saxony. This identification is based on the facial similarities to another portrait of the same person, also by Rosalba and conserved in Dresden; the dating to the end of the 1730s is confirmed by the very close similarities in technique - particularly in the use of pencil on the pastel tinted background to suggest the brocade garment.

Rosalba Carriera was the only Venetian portrait painter apart from Sebastiano Ricci to use pastels. Her work was appreciated beyond the boundaries of Venice, and she received commissions from many European courts.

Among her contemporaries, Rosalba Carriera was regarded as the most famous woman painter of the first half of the 18th century, if not indeed as the “queen of Venice”. In Venice, “la famosa Rosalba” ran a salon where society ladies went to see and be seen, and where merchants and aristocrats who were passing through felt duty-bound to have their portraits painted. In 1705 she became the first woman to be elected to the Accademia di San Luca in Rome, in 1720 to the Bolognese Academy and when she went to Paris in ¹⁷²¹⁄₂₂, where she was also elected to the Academy her pictures unleashed a veritable fashion frenzy.

The best works of Carriera were created when the gentle appeal and flattering softness of pastel complemented the personality of the sitter. This is certainly true in this portrait of a young girl. The mother-of-pearl flesh tone has been rendered in classic pastel hues of blue, pink and pale grey, and the lack of depth in colority is perfectly suited to capturing this almost childlike face.

This painting is remarkable for its sense of immediacy deriving from the careful study of the sitter.

Of the three Le Blond brothers, one, a priest, served as secretary to Cardinal Polignac, another filled the office of French Consul-General in Milan, and the third performed similar duties in Venice, where he commissioned the portrait seen here.

In this painting, which was made by the artist a few years before she fell victim to “a total loss of reason”, Carriera’s face appears pained and tired, almost foreshadowing the real blindness that would afflict the painter .

Sources describe Rosalba Carriera as reticent: chaste, bourgeois, worthy pleasant enough in her manner, but with something of the old maid about her. In 1746 an eye complaint forced her to abandon her career, and the end of her life was marked by deep depression.

The artist’s self-portrait, dating from 1715, gives us some inkling of the many sides of her personality. The picture was commissioned by the house of Medici, in whose Florentine portrait gallery the already famous painter was to take her place. We see her slightly inclining to one side, her gaze confidently directed towards us. While the smile on her lips is barely noticeable, the friendly eyes are a little serious. In her left hand the painter is holding a “picture within a picture”, on which she is placing a brush with her right hand. In this way she is presenting to us her sister Giovanna, who was so to speak the unmarried artist’s alter ego and housekeeper. Only with her help could Rosalba Carriera carry out her portrait commissions as she did.

This painting belongs to a series of four representing The Four Seasons.

This painting belongs to a series of four representing The Four Seasons.

This painting belongs to a series of four representing The Four Seasons.

A sister-in-law of Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini, Rosalba Carriera achieves the same airy lightness of touch as her relative in her portraits. These were done in pastel and in them she explored the finest shadings of her subjects’ characters, the most fleeting of their moods. Thus, without falling either into the dangers of the encomiastic portrait or of the documentary, Rosalba matches the immediacy of pastel technique to the freshness of her psychological and social penetration of her subjects, offering an unrivalled picture of the society of her time.

The artist uses her pastels with consummate skill in conveying the vanity of the Young Cavalier.

Rosalba Carriera painted - it would be no less true to say that she drew - with pastel crayons on softly tinted paper. Pastel colours are rubbed dry on to grainy paper in the form of a soft, powdery pigment with little in the way of binder, and they stick to the paper as a layer of coloured dust. As pastel colours can hardly be mixed by applying them on top of each other on the paper itself, the colour richness is created mainly through the juxtaposition of the powdered pigment. The palette of crayons has to be correspondingly elaborate. But the rubbed pastel never had a lasting quality. However, the ‘jeunesse dor�e,’ the aristocratic mistresses and the notorious courtesans all laid siege to Signora Carriera’s studio, because the portraitist knew how occasionally to enrich the external charm of skin and costume with penetrating, characterful and emotional elements.

The sitter of this portrait, painted by Carriera during his stay in Paris in 1720-21, is the daughter of the financier John Law (1672-1729).

A sister-in-law of Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini, Rosalba Carriera achieves the same airy lightness of touch as her relative in her portraits. These were done in pastel and in them she explored the finest shadings of her subjects’ characters, the most fleeting of their moods. Thus, without falling either into the dangers of the encomiastic portrait or of the documentary, Rosalba matches the immediacy of pastel technique to the freshness of her psychological and social penetration of her subjects, offering an unrivalled picture of the society of her time. In the Elderly Lady the mature beauty of the noblewoman and her serene good-natured existence are conveyed with incomparable skill. No less typical of her work is the portrait of Cardinal Melchior de Polignac with its superb rendering of the physical features of the subject, catching immediately the wilful character of the prelate.

The artist uses her pastels with consummate skill in conveying the fresh innocence of the Young Lady of the Le Blond Family.