L'Italo-Americano

L'Italo-Americano THURSDAY, MAY 16, 2024 www.italoamericano.org 6 NEWS & FEATURES TOP STORIES PEOPLE EVENTS explains Craievich. "Studies today affirm that she was the first to understand the possi- bilities offered by ivory for painting miniatures, replacing it with traditional mediums such as copper or parchment, elevating thus a technique that until then had been arti- sanal. She turned it into a true art." Such small-scale paintings demanded sophisticated and innovative techniques. Carri- era combined traditional, transparent watercolors and gouache, an opaque, dense paint where pigments were ground up with gum Arabic powder mixed into the hot water as a binder for colors. These techniques gave her paintings more impact. The trailblazing pastelist from Venice was a contempo- rary of Canaletto and Tiepolo. In 1705 she was admitted as a " p i t t r i c e e m i n i a t r i c e v e n e z i a n a " i n t o t h e Accedemia di San Luca in Rome. In the next few years, she b e c a m e a n i n t e r n a t i o n a l celebrity for her pastel por- traits, leading her to tour European capitals and courts in the 1720s and 1730s. She succeeded highly in England, Germany, France, Holland, Denmark, Austria and Scan- dinavia. During her stay in Paris, between 1720 and 1721, she was influential in estab- lishing the fashion for pastel painting that blossomed in France in the 18th century. In 1 7 2 1 , w h e n a d m i t t e d i n t o the Académie Royale de Pein- ture et de Sculpture she pro- duced several portraits of Louis XV in pastel and minia- ture, and of prominent mem- bers of French and British aristocracy. Her diary in Paris s h o w s a h e c t i c b u s i n e s s schedule of meeting with peo- ple to portray: for example, on the morning of October 2, 1721, she writes: "I promised a sitting with an Englishman for the sixth time." After her formative stay in Paris, Carriera created the fig- urative allegorical series of the four continents known at the time. Her resonant portrait of America belongs to this set. T h e p a i n t i n g d e p i c t s t h e f e m a l e p e r s o n i f i c a t i o n o f America: it's a luminous pas- tel on paper mounted on can- vas preserved at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington D.C. A b e a u t i f u l y o u n g w o m a n , clearly a Native American, carries a spear in her right h a n d . A j e w e l e d f i l l e t trimmed with feathers is in her hair. A pendant earring graces her face. On her back, she carries a quiver of arrows. Even though Carriera was n o t b o r n i n t o a w e a l t h y lifestyle ―her father was a bureaucrat, and her mother w a s a " m e r l e t t a i a , " a n embroiderer ―her parents made ends meet because Car- riera received an unimagin- a b l e e d u c a t i o n f o r m o s t women of her time. She was fluent in Latin, French, and E n g l i s h . S h e c o u l d p l a y instruments like her two sis- ters, who were musicians. The brilliant portraitist was a meticulous workaholic who chose to stay single to create her own life and clearly understood what she wanted: painting. "Carriera remained o b s t i n a t e l y u n m a r r i e d throughout her life and was able to conquer for herself and her female family (her mother Alba and especially her sister Giovanna) a com- fortable and bourgeois exis- t e n c e , b a s e d o n w o r k , " explains Maria Cristina Grib- a u d i , P r e s i d e n t a t F o n - d a z i o n e M u s e i C i v i c i d i Venezia. She never had or wanted a patron of arts, which allowed her to maintain complete autonomy. Somehow, she was a self-made woman and an independent business- w o m a n , b e s i d e s b e i n g a n a r t i s t . T h o u g h s h e w a s intensely private, she kept a diary and voluminous corre- spondence that offered clues about what her life was like. In her 550 letters, we discov- er a woman who could dis- cuss new ideals with artists, princes, and sovereigns in various languages, stand up to inappropriate requests with polite firmness, or set up negotiations knowledgeable about fees and delivery times. We discover a realm of rococo sophistication and wit in the Venetian show. The selection of miniatures and pastel paintings explodes with detail, ornament, pat- terns, and decoration. The colors are pure, rich and vivid on the luminous, milky skin of the sitters. Soft tones dial up or down the spectrum to achieve an enigmatic inter- play of shadow and depth. Memories of the Grand Tour include the Portrait of William Murray, Marquis of T u l l i b a r d i n e , a S c o t t i s h nobleman in Venice between October and December 1710. From 1715, he participated in all the Jacobite insurrections until the defeat at Culloden in 1746. Once captured, they t o o k h i m t o t h e T o w e r o f London, where he would die shortly after. Among the show's many examples of meticulously detailed psychological por- traiture, one depicts a Lon- d o n t h e a t e r a c t o r , J a m e s Quin, who achieved the sum- mit of success in 1731. Years earlier, he had killed two fel- low actors, one in a duel after another over a dispute con- cerning the pronunciation of the name Cato. A portrait of Philip Wharton hangs on the walls. Here, the cold silvery blue of the cloaks predomi- nates. A watercolor and gouache on ivory depict Bertie Nor- reys, an English Tory politi- c i a n w h o d i e d i n P a d u a . Another miniature is about William Ponsonby, 2nd Earl of Bessborough, a British politician of Irish descent. "He was in Venice in May 1737, a circumstance which would allow us to consider the portrait in question one of the last miniatures executed by Rosalba," explains the curator. little masterpieces by the technical virtuosity with which the laces, the fabrics of their dresses, or the floral bouquets knotted i n t h e h a i r o r h e l d i n t h e ladies' laps. A pastel work by Rosalba C a r r i e r a t i t l e d R a g a z z a Tirolese or Tyrolese Lady was recently rediscovered at Tat- ton Park, Cheshire, England. It's a bust-length portrait of a woman in a black lace-lined cap, a white lace chemise, and a black dress—the Victoria & Albert Museum in London houses a version of the same painting. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York preserves one of Carriera's most exuber- ant works: the pastel portrait of Gustavus Hamilton, an Irishman who visited Venice in the winters of 1730 and 1731 with his friend Edward Walpole, son of the English prime minister Sir Robert Walpole, to attend the city's Carnival festivities. Hamilton wears a hat, veil, mask, and a short cape known as Bautista, typical for these Venetian cel- ebrations. C a r r i e r a u s e d l a y e r s o f white pastel to create those almost translucent skin tones on all those ghost-white pow- dered faces, which are classi- cally familiar, deeply expres- sive, and strange at once. The rococo pastel master captures the essence of their emotions and personalities. She was a genius for repre- senting human character and emotion and packing incredi- ble detail into the briefest of pastel strokes. There is a psy- chological dimension to her p o s e d p o r t r a i t s . V i e w e d today, they speak to current discussions around represen- tation in art and show a depth of feeling that endures three centuries later. In the beautiful laboratory- h o u s e o f S a n V i o , o n t h e Grand Canal, Carriera was portraying herself, too. A crude, modern adherence to reality marks her self-por- traits. Grand Duke Cosimo de' Medici purchased one for his collection of artists' self-por- traits today in the Uffizi. But the most famous is the last one, preserved in the Gallerie dell'Accademia in Venice. Crowned with a triumphant laurel wreath, Carriera por- trays herself as mercilessly old, with grey, unkempt hair. Her look is sad, the right eye clouded, indicating a severe sight issue. The artist show- cases her existential despair. Her tireless work had led her to blindness. Alberto Craievich, Director of Cà Rezzonico Museum of Venetian Settecento, says that "Rosalba's name is inextricably associated with pastel, a technique that she led to maximum virtuosity and which made her famous quickly" CONTINUED FROM PAGE 4 Self-portrait as "Winter" (Photo: Archivart / Alamy Stock Photo)

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