Tyrolese Girl
Rosalba Carriera (Venice 1673 - Venice 1757)
Category
Art / Drawings and watercolours
Date
1729
Materials
Pastel on paper
Measurements
457 x 330 mm
Collection
Tatton Park, Cheshire
NT 1298229
Caption
Rosalba Carriera was at the forefront of pastel’s emergence as a fully developed art form in the early 18th century, ultimately becoming its most famous and commercially successful practitioner. Even 100 years after her death, she was still being hailed as ‘the queen of pastel’. Based in her native Venice, she established an international clientele for her works and was celebrated for her unprecedented virtuosity. Using both wet and dry sticks, she deftly worked their bright pigments with paintbrushes, tiny combs, rolled-up paper and her fingertips. Carriera developed her shimmering effects just as the taste of European elites in the visual arts was turning towards a greater luminosity, intimacy and sensuous lightness of touch. Through considerable business acumen and professional ambition, she not only exploited this new direction in art – now referred to as Rococo – but also played a significant part in shaping it. In Britain her legacy survives principally in the works brought home by grand tourists – wealthy young men completing their education with an Italian ‘gap year’. The more discerning of these might visit Carriera’s comfortable studio and acquire one of her allegorical or character studies, perhaps depicting a young woman in the typical dress of the Tyrolean Alps – then one of the main routes between Britain and the Italian peninsula. Others might commission a portrait of themselves in extravagant Venetian fashions as a souvenir of their time in a city notorious for its parties and casinos. Her rarer portrait drawings, in simple chalk or ink, reveal the acute character observation that underpins her more flamboyant pastel creations. Aware of the great distances over which her fragile pastels were transported, Carriera would habitually slip a little print of the three Magi behind their stretchers as a protective talisman. Examples of these have recently been identified or discovered with works at Tatton Park and The Vyne – a testament both to their maker’s professional care and her spiritual life.
Summary
Pastel on paper, Tyrolese Girl, Rosalba Carriera (Venice 1675 - Venice 1757), 1729. A bust-length portrait of a woman in a black lace lined white cap, a white lace chemise and black dress. A version of the portrait of a Tyrolese Woman of 1728 in the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden (Gal.-Nr. P 28). Another version is held at the V&A, London (acc. no. P.11-1963). When the present picture was unframed a Santini prayer card was found separating the pieces from the backing. Carriera typically hid a Santini prayer card into the back of frames when she prepared a picture of export. A letter from Consul Joseph Smith to Samuel Hill, dated 26 November 1729, details a consignment of paintings and prints dispatched from Venice on 22nd November 1729. In it a 'Rosalba' (presumably this portrait) is listed (Egerton Archive, John Rylands Research Institute and Library, Manchester).
Marks and inscriptions
67 (painted on a small plaque attached to base of frame) Back: Handwritten label - Mrs Wibraham nee Miss Harvey sister of Sir E Harvey, Chigwell, Essex
Makers and roles
Rosalba Carriera (Venice 1673 - Venice 1757), artist after Rosalba Carriera (Venice 1673 - Venice 1757), artist
References
Sani 1988, Bernardina Sani, Rosalba Carriera, 1988, no.242, p.308 & fig.212. Conroy, Rachel, Women Artists and Designers at the National Trust, 2025, pp. 54-7