Rosalba Carriera, much more than a “batter girl”

Rosalba Carriera portrayed the Habsburg princesses, a very young Louis XV of France, the king of Denmark (“incognito”). Naturally the Venetian noblewomen, but also the most famous ballerinas and opera singers. And above all the selected international milieu of those who stayed in Venice or arrived there for the Grand Tour.

Furthermore, he did it by managing a solid network of art dealers and collectors on his own, remaining in contact with heads of state and dignitaries, providing for the economic fortune of his shop and his family, his mother and two sisters. Without getting married or having to submit to the authority of a man. Because of this Rosalba Careerwho was born in Venice in 1673 and died in 1757, has not only become a stable presence in exhibitions in Italy and abroad in recent years, but also a flag of female empowerment. This label, however, risks leaving the artistic experience of an extraordinary innovator in the shade.

Rosalba Carriera, the pastel revolution

«For thirty years he had no rivals, neither male nor female in what it was applied to” declares Alberto Craievich, curator of Ca’ Rezzonico Museum of the Eighteenth Century to Venice. «Twice Rosalba he excelled. In pastelthe technique for which her contemporaries celebrated her and for which she is best known today, which took her to Rome, Paris, Vienna.”

And today in exhibitions around Europe: for the 350th anniversary of its birth, for example, in Dresden, where the Elector of Saxony Augustus the Strong had created “the Rosalba Cabinet” which until 1918 housed 157 pastel works, an exhibition of over 100 has just ended portraits. «But Rosalba revolutionized the miniature technique even before that on ivory, elevating it from a craft to a true art.” The centerpiece of the exhibition Rosalba Career. Miniatures on ivory which has just opened at Ca’ Rezzonico.

The fortune of being a citizen of the Serenissima

Daughter of a lacemaker and an official of the Republic always traveling on the mainland, Rosalba grew up in a wealthy environment where together with her two sisters Giovanna and Angela she was able to study Latin, French, music, poetry, as well as embroidery and painting. At the time, Venice had already lost much of the political power that had distinguished it over the centuries, but certainly not its elegance and splendor. She excels, among other things, in high craftsmanship: a specialty is snuffboxes, of which as a girl Rosalba painted the bottoms with not too refined female figures, and scenes often of erotic themes. Above all, Venice remains a cutting-edge city in the freedom granted to women: they can have guardianship of their children, inherit, own houses, goods or a shop. Rosalba therefore has no obstacles in managing her life independently, in being her own manager. Certainly, Craievich underlines, she never claimed anything more than the customs of the time allowed her. «Even when she went to Paris in 1720, she was accompanied by her mother, her sisters, and her brother-in-law, to avoid scandals and gossip».

With the ivory miniatures, the turning point of his career

But how does he manage to portray the nobles of Versailles and the young Dauphin? From her rich correspondence it emerges that in 1695 she finished with snuffboxes and thanks to her emerging talent she had already moved on to painting miniature portraits on an ivory base. It is these works (maximum diameter of 8-10 centimeters) that made her career take off. He uses fast and fluid brushstrokes, which until now were only used in painting on canvas, to give movement to highly coveted “gadgets” that convey the carefree atmosphere of the Ancien Régime. The ivory translucents into the complexion of the portraits and gives them a delicacy and shine never seen before. Here Rosalba puts that delicate and “evaporated” trait to the test, as Roberto Longhi defined it, which best expresses the graceful taste of rococo. These are the works that paid her the most, even three times a pastel, and which, when she had already begun a career as a “batter artist” in 1705, opened the doors to one of the most prestigious academies, that of San Luca in Rome.

The rulers go to her to have their portrait painted

Europe is also opening up: in 1700 his network of contacts included the Elector of Saxony, who he portrayed in 1714, the French collector and artist Louis Vatin. And Christian Cole, secretary of the English embassy in Venice, who considers himself one of its first agents among the travelers of the Grand Tour. The house in Venice is the meeting point of artists, collectors and art dealers where her fame rises and brings her invitations from the courts of Europe. Before 1720, however, perhaps because her father was still alive, she remained in the lagoon, and let the rulers come to her to have their portrait painted: Frederick IV, king of Denmark, for example, who arrived incognito in 1708 at the workshop her.

He arrives in Paris at the invitation of Pierre Crozat, a great collector with whom he corresponded for 25 years, and She was immediately admitted, the first foreign woman, to the French Royal Academy of Painting, he met Jean-Antoine Watteau and many other artists of the time. Above all, he went several times to the Royal Palace to portray the very young King Louis XV. Rosalba gives a vaporous style to her painting with pastels, diluting the powders with water and excelling once again in the attention to detail, which she had practiced so much in the miniatures: lace, wigs, skin tones.

In Paris Rosalba Carriera created more than 50 pastel portraits

Fabrics and jewels also shine thanks to the use of dark backdrops (necklaces and earrings are often found identical in different works because Rosalba uses her own as stage paraphernalia). She creates portraits of great verisimilitude that capture the attention of the observer, because the subject always looks straight ahead, and from which it seems one can guess their character. Everything is rendered with that grace that dampens the effect of physical defects, which does not spare. In Paris he created more than 50 pastel portraits, but in 1721 he returned to Venice again to his house on the Grand Canal with mother and sisters. Joseph Smith enters his network of collaborators and makes the workshop even more flourishing, shipping works to England (they travel with a holy card glued to the back to protect them) and making them a must for the English on the Grand Tour.

The first students appear: Marianna Carlevarijs, Feilicita Sartori, Catherine Read. None, however, equals her in talent. In 1730, the same year that she goes to Vienna to portray Amalia of Habsburg, she paints herself as an allegory of Winter, an elderly woman with white hair. A few years later her decline, with the worsening of her vision problems, which an operation fails to stop. She died, alone and blind, at 84 years old.

An exhibition in Venice

Until January 9, 2024, Ca’ Rezzonico The Museum of Eighteenth-Century Venice exhibits with Rosalba Carriera ivory miniatures 36 ivory miniatures, a fifth of the entire production created by the artist with this material. Pastels, documents, drawings and prints from the museum collection, or lent by foundations, civic museums or other institutions enrich the artistic journey. The exhibition unfolds in the rooms of a museum which, with its furnishings, is the first witness to that “civilization of conversation” of which Rosalba Carriera was an interpreter and witness.

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