Rosalba Carriera

(Italy, 12/01/1673 - 15/04/1757)

Self-Portrait Holding a Portrait of Her Sister (1715)

As the first woman to definitively instigate a new artistic style, Carriera is known as one of the most successful and influential female artists. Her innovative use of pastels removed associations with the informal drawings and preparatory sketches for which they were traditionally used, popularising the medium to such an extent that it became an instrument of serious portraiture and establishing her as the first pioneer of Rococo.

Much of her childhood and artistic training remains unknown as her skills are already refined on her earliest known miniatures on the lids of snuff-boxes. Around 1700, Carriera began painting miniature portraits of allegorical subjects and Grand Tourists which enabled her to support herself and her sister, Giovanna, who was also her assistant, and established her reputation within Italy’s artistic establishment. By 1703 she had completed her first pastel portrait and was accepted into Rome’s Accademia di San Luca the following year.

Following her stay in Paris in 1720, during which time she gifted King Louis XV a pastel portrait, the previously accepted artistic style of the French court was all by sidelined in favour of the airbrushed delicacy of her pastels, which gave rise to the Rococo movement in France and England, where her work was collected by King George III.

Carriera’s achievements are not limited to aesthetics, as she can also be credited with revolutionising the technology of pastels by creating a technique of forming coloured chalk into sticks, which expanded the range and availability of preprepared colours and allowed pastels to be easily transported, undoubtedly increasing their appeal and popularity.

By 1746, Carriera has completely lost her sight and was thus unable to work but her portraits and technique continued to influence artists throughout the second half of the eighteenth century, such as French portraitists Adélaïde Labille-Guiard and Elisabeth Louise Vigée-LeBrun.

Image: Rosalba Carriera, Self-Portrait Holding a Portrait of Her Sister (1715). Pastel on paper, 71 x 57 cm. Uffizi Gallery, Italy.