"Rosalba Carriera"

instant photograph (Polaroid)

signed, titled, dated and numbered on verso

Rosalba Carriera (1675-1757)
The Rococo portraitist to the courts of Europe
The first of three children born to administrator Andrea Carriera and his wife, Alba Foresti, embroiderer and lace-maker, Rosalba Carriera was born in 1675. Thanks to her talent in drawing, Giuseppe Diamantini e Antonio Balestra agreed to take her on as pupil. She learned the art of watercolour miniature and how to handle pastels from Felice Ramelli. Her miniature paintings – portraits and allegories which decorated tobacconists and medallions – soon received critical acclaim. In 1703 she discovered, for herself and her contemporaries, pastel painting, which from then onwards, became her specialisation. The numerous requests for her works of religious, allegorical and mythological subjects realized with this technique pushed her to involve her younger sisters, Giovanna and Angela, who became her assistants and disciples. With few exceptions, her elegant portraits in light pastel colours, finished with a velvety pearl effect match perfectly with the refined tastes of the Rococo style. In 1705 Rosalba became a member of the Accademia de San Luca in Rome, and later, of the Accademia Clementina di Bologna. From 1715 she hired the influential art dealer Pierre Crozat as her assistant. Invited in 1720 to the Academy of Arts in Paris, the Venetian inaugurated a style which art history would remember as “French pastel painting”. She portrayed the Dauphin Louis XV in this style, inspiring French Rococo portraitists, from Maurice- Quentin de la Tour to Elisabeth-Louise Vigée-Le Brun. Her 1721 meeting with Antoine Watteau resulted in the painters’ portraits of one another, a “Confrontation at the Vertex of Rococo Art”. With this, Rosalba resolved to return to Venice where she lived with her sisters Giovanna and later Angela, upon the loss of her husband painter Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini. Rosalba Carriera was courted by Europe’s leading men, among whom Count Christian Ludwig II von Meckenburg-Schwerin, the King Frederick IV of Denmark, as well as the Prince-Elect of Bavaria Max Emmanuel II. The most assiduous concomitants were the Prince Elects of Saxony, Frederick August I (“The Strong”) and his son, Frederick August II, who would collect over 150 of Carriera’s works to hand in the halls of his Dresdan palace. In 1723 she was sent to Modena by Count Rinaldo d’Este, with the task of painting not only the commissioner of the works himself but also his three daughters as well as a series of court members. In 1730 she visited the Viennese court of Emperor Charles VI in order to paint the imperial family, deliberately rendered more attractive, causing the emperor to joke, “She may very well be talented but , but she is lacking in beauty!” In her self-portraits Rosalba Carriera does nothing to flatter herself: from her self-portrait painted at the beginning of her artistic career in which she is shown holding a portrait of her sister (1715), to the allegory for Winter painted at her climax (1731), to her last self- portrait, in which she allows her suffering to transpire in the eyes( 1745), the artist renders the reality before her perfectly. The portraitist to the courts of Europe during the rococo period spent her last years in total blindness.

Donne Illustri
Caffà Florian on St Mark’s Square in Venice: in the “Sala degli Uomini Illustri” (salon of famous men) hang ten oil paintings by Giulio Carlini (1826–1887). Irene Andessner confronts these posthumously painted portraits of famous Venetians – from Marco Polo via Titian to Goldoni – with ten Venetian women, among them the city’s most famous composer (Barbara Strozzi) and painter (Rosalba Carriera) and the most expensive courtesan (Veronica Franco), as well as the first female doctor (Elena Lucrezia Cornaro Piscopia) and the world’s first female lawyer (Moderata Fonte). Through this intervention the Sala degli Uomini Illustri is transformed into the Sala delle Donne Illustri (salon of famous women). A picture puzzle-like disturbance: disregarding make-up, wardrobe, light, decoration and pictorial detail, Andessner’s portrayals differ from the historical picture references of the ten female figures in that she has not copied the bearing and look of the women, but rather of the men from the portraits hanging above. Thus the self-perception, the pre-potency of the male counterparts is broken. 

A further room, the Saletta Liberty, is turned into the “Moderata Fonte Room” with a Fonte/Andessner photographic full-length self-portrait in a light box. Opposite this portrait Andessner places a “Fonte” portrait painted in oil on canvas, for which she sat as model in the workshop of Marinella Biscaro.
“7 Gentildonne”: as a preliminary to the exhibition Andessner convenes a meeting of seven Italians in the Caffà Florian men’s salon – inspired by Moderata Fonte’s debate in the novel “Verdienst der Frauen” [merit of women], documented as a video work. In the photo production for the Venice project there are additional full-length portraits, which transpose into our time the historicised portrayals of women (only visible in oval bust details in the room installation) by means of complete styling. In these images it can also be seen that the artist has the camera shutter release in her hand; which means – in contrast to earlier productions – she releases the image herself in just that moment when she herself inwardly feels the particular role so fully that she is sure she is bringing the personality of that model woman perfectly to expression. This way of working corresponds to the historical Venetian women, who likewise developed and lived out their professions self-determined and self-employed, independent of men. The full-length self-portraits are executed as light boxes. 
The “Donne Illustri” project, curated by Stefano Stipitivich, takes place under the auspices of the Art Programme of the Caffà Florian. Started over 15 years ago by the caf» owner and art collector Daniela Gaddo Vedaldi, the series of exhibitions has so far represented artists such as Mimmo Rotella (1990), Fabrizio Plessi (1993 and 2001) and Luca Buvoli (1997)