Rosalba Carriera (Venezia 1675 - 1757) scuola di

Rosalba Carriera (Venice 1675 - 1757) school of Girl reading Pastel on paper 61 x 50 cm Rosalba Carriera is among the greatest artists of 18th-century Europe. She is considered the greatest female artist of all time. Her style is the most attentive and penetrating of eighteenth-century Venetian and European society, fundamental to the development of French portraiture. With her portraits she fathomed unparalleled ideals of grace and elegance of an era: the swan song of the European nobility, which after a few decades would lose its status within the society renewed by Enlightenment ideas. Educated to cultivate the arts, as was fitting for girls of the time, Rosalba and her two sisters studied music, literature, painting, embroidery, and foreign languages. Soon Rosalba devoted herself to the study of painting, especially in miniatures and portraits, deepening and rediscovering the pastel technique, which was forgotten at the time. Having become famous for the delicacy of her miniatures, she began to portray the most imminent personalities of the time using the pastel technique, in which she excelled in Europe. Thanks to the delicate shading and pure color marks that this technique allows, patrons found in her works both extreme delicacy in the velvety complexions and realistic precision in the details. Success combined with her knowledge of languages paved her way to many courts in Europe, where she increased her fame by painting miniatures and portraits for royal families and court nobility. She died in Venice in her early eighties on April 15, 1757, after a painful decade of blindness. Her pupils were trained under her: Marianna Carlevarijs, Felicita Sartori, Angioletta Sartori, Gian Antonio Lazzari. Rosalba Carriera (Venice 1675 - 1757) school of Girl Reading Pastel on paper 61 x 50 cm