Rosalba Carriera was one of the most important, most popular and most successful Venetian portrait painters of the 1700s. She is especially renowned for her intimate and flattering pastel portraits.

In her early career, she mostly painted miniatures on ivory, snuff boxes and similar items, but soon changed to pastel colours.

During her life, she painted Louis XV of France, the young August of Saxony, later king of Poland, and the Austrian emperor. Her works are consequently scattered all over Europe, with many in Dresden, in Paris, and in London. Well over four hundred pastels and miniatures are ascribed to her.

Family

Rosalba was born, either on January 12th, 1672 M.V.¹ or on October 7th, 1675, to Andrea Carriera and Alba Foresti. She was the middle of three daughters.

Her father, an original citizen,² but of an economic humble background, was a law consultant in the administration of the Republic of Venice. He was also an amateur painter, and his interests in the arts paved the way for the education of his daughters.

From 1700, they lived in a house on the Grand Canal, neighbour to the unfinished Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, now the Peggy Guggenheim Collection.

Rosalba and her sisters received a good education, which included music, literature, poetry, drawing and French and English. Her drawing skills attracted particular attention, and her parents sent her to the Venetian painters Giuseppe Diamantini and Antonio Balestra to learn more.

Her older sister Angela (Anzola) was also skilled at miniature painting, and at song and music, but it all fell wayside, as she married the painter Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini. Angela remained close to her mother and Rosalba, with whom she was in constant correspondence during her travels with her husband. When Pellegrini died in 1741, Angela returned to live with her sister in their paternal home on the Grand Canal.

The younger sister Giovanna, born in 1683, worked with Rosalba, and accompanied her on all her reluctant travels, to Paris, Modena and Vienna. She was skilled both in miniature painting and pastel, and an able poet and singer. Giovanna helped Rosalba, apparently with making copies, but it is very difficult to distinguish between the relative contributions of the two sisters. She died in 1737, aged 54.

Career

Initially, Rosalba Carriera used her skills and education to paint miniature portraits on ivory for snuffboxes, which was quite profitable. Snuff was the preferred way of consuming tobacco for the aristocracy of the period, and snuffboxes were popular luxury items.

At least eighty such works exist from the hand of Carriera, but her later problems of eyesight might have their origins in this period.

Around 1700, she learned the technique of pastel colours, supposedly at the suggestion of a French painter named Jean Steve. Her first known pastel portraits are from 1703.

Her talent as a painter, and her particular skill for reading peoples’ personality in a sitting, allowed her to create intimate and flattering, yet realistic pastel portraits.

She soon became a sought after artist. Merchants and diplomats visting Venice, and young aristocrats on the Grand Tour would come to have their portrait painted, and they were soon followed by foreign dignitaries.

In 1704, she painted Maximillian Emanuel II of Bavaria,³ in 1706 Christian Louis II, Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, in 1708 Frederick IV of Denmark and Norway,⁴ and in 1711 Augustus III, Prince of Saxony, later Elector of Saxony, and King of Poland and Grand-duke of Lithuania.⁵

She was accepted into the Accademia di S. Luca in Rome in 1705, and into the Accademia Clementina of Bologna in 1720.

Travels

Carriera was never keen on travelling, and much preferred staying in Venice, in her home, with her family.

However, in 1720, she travelled to Paris — accompanied by her family, including brother-in-law Pellegrini — where they stayed for almost one year.

The visit was a success, and among many others, she painted a portrait of the King, Louis XV. Most commissions, however, were from private wealthy citizens, but some of the works later made it into the Louvre collections.

She made around fifty paintings during the visit, the majority pastel portraits.

Subsequently, Rosalba Carriera was made a member of the Académie royale de peinture, and she sent the academy a painting after her return to Venice.

Following the visit to Paris, in 1723, she went to the Duchy of Modena to paint the princesses. She spent five months there, making several portraits of each princess, as they were to be sent to prospective suitors.

Five years later, in 1728, Rosalba Carriera made the short journey to Gorizia in Friuli, for the ceremonial visit of Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI,⁶ in the hope of painting his portrait. While she didn’t succeed immediately, she did produce portraits of three imperial princes. The portraits are, unfortunately, all lost.

Nevertheless, it did earn her an invitation to go to Vienna in 1730, where she painted the empress, and possibly also the emperor, but that painting has been lost too.

Emperor Charles VI famously noted to his court painter: “She might be worthy, my dear Bertoli, this your paintress, but she is very ugly.” Supposedly, Rosalba overheard this comment, but wasn’t offended.⁷

Economy

Rosalba Carriera was a very successful artist, and she could command adequate prices for her paintings.

Her notes from the 1720s show that she charged 22 zecchini,⁸ and later 25 zecchini for a portrait, and that she was usually paid within the week. Some portraits earned her as much as a hundred zecchini.

A set of allegories of the four seasons, which were always popular, cost up to 240 zecchini.

At her death, her estate was valued at almost 25,000 ducats,⁹ of which 15,000 were entailed on her sister. This was in line with the patrimony of other successful artists of the time.

Later life

Throughout her life, Rosalba remained close to her family and, particularly, her sisters Angela and Giovanna.

While she travelled abroad, most often accompanied by one or both of her sisters, she always came back to Venice and her family.

The death of Giovanna in 1734 was a hard blow, and her production slowed down. Her older sister Angela moved back to the paternal home after the death of her husband in 1741.

However, in 1746, disaster struck. Rosalba got an illness in the eyes and lost most of her eyesight. Her last paintings are from this year.

She attempted an operation for cataract in 1749, which brought some of her eyesight back, but the year after she was completely blind again.

The remaining years of her life she spent blind, and unable to do the only thing she cared about. She probably suffered from a deep depression, and some sources say she went mad.

Antonio Maria Zanetti the younger, a contemporary artist and art critic, who knew Carriera, later wrote:

It is worth philosophizing about the cases of this illustrious woman, whose Spirit was at every age periodically oppressed by naturally very fierce sadness, amid a thousand ideas of happiness and joy; and in the end, this bad habit reached such an extent, perhaps due to the weakness of the organs as she aged, that she fell into a complete delusion of reason. A few years before, she made her own portrait with a garland of leaves; and when asked what she meant by it, she replied that it was Tragedy; and that Rosalba was to end tragically, as indeed happened.

Zanetti (1771), p. 449.

Rosalba Carriera died in 1757, aged 84. She was buried in the Church of San Vio, in Dorsoduro where she and her family always lived.

Paintings

While Carriera mostly painted portraits, she also painted allegories of various kinds.

Notes

1. The designation more veneto (abbreviated M.V.) indicates that a date in January or February is in the Venetian calendar, which had new year on March 1st. ↩︎
2. The cittadinanza originaria (original citizens) was a class of citizens, who could prove their citizenship of the Republic of Venice for at least three generations. Many roles in the republic were reserved for original citizens. ↩︎
3. Maximillian Emanuel II of Bavaria (1662–1726) was King of Bavaria and Prince-Elector of the Holy Roman Empire. ↩︎
4. Frederick IV of Denmark and Norway (1671-1730) visited Venice in 1708–1709. ↩︎
5. Augustus III (1696–1763) was King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania from 1733 until 1763, and Elector of Saxony in the Holy Roman Empire. ↩︎
6. Charles VI (1685–1740) was Holy Roman Emperor and ruler of the Austrian Habsburg monarchy from 1711. ↩︎
7. Sarà valente, Bertoli mio, questa tua pittrice, ma ella è molto brutta (Zanetti (1818), p. 18). No matter how brilliant, a woman is always judged by her looks. ↩︎
8. The zecchino (also zechin, ducato d’oro or cecchino) was the finest Venetian gold coin, worth at the end of the republic, 22 lire. ↩︎
9. The ducato veneto (also ducato d’argento) was a Venetian silver coin, worth at times eight lire, or six lire and four denari, minted since 1562. The corresponding gold coin was a zecchino. ↩︎