36 miniatures on ivory by Rosalba Carriera on display in Venice, Ca' Rezzonico

350 years have passed since the birth of Rosalba Carriera (Venice, 1673 - 1757), destined to become the most famous artist in Europe in the 18th century. To mark the occasion, the City of Venice and Fondazione MUVE are presenting an exhibition(Rosalba Carriera, miniatures on ivory, curated by Alberto Craievich) from October 13, 2023 to January 9, 2024, at the renovated venue of Ca’ Rezzonico - Museo del Settecento Veneziano, which investigates a particular aspect of the artist’s production: miniatures on ivory. The exhibition provides an opportunity to see as many as 36 works brought together, fine portraits, highly successful among the painter’s contemporaries but which have come down to us in a small number, alongside the famous pastels, documents, drawings, prints, from the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia and private collections.

Not everyone knows, in fact, that Rosalba Carriera in addition to devoting herself to pastel portraiture was an extraordinary painter of miniatures, on snuffboxes first and then on ivory. It is to her that we owe the fortune of this genre, elevated from a “minor” and artisanal practice to the equal dignity of works on canvas. Through an innovative technique and great skill Rosalba Carriera succeeded in bringing, for the first time, to the tiny surface of ivory backdrops the loose and vibrant brushstrokes of painting on canvas. Success was immediate. There was no traveler who during his Venetian sojourn did not aspire to have a miniature portrait of Carriera done.

Instead, it is well known how the painter’s excellence in portraits found everyone in agreement: from English lords to the princes of the Empire, becoming perhaps the only artist to garner unanimous acclaim among both the sophisticated connoisseurs of the international beau monde and the traditionalist and conservative Venetian aristocracy.

The exhibition at Ca’ Rezzonico makes it possible to admire works of extraordinary fragrance and delicacy, classics of Rococo art, snapshots of the dolce vita of the nobility in which we find the protagonists of that worldly and gallant society whose moods, character and vanities Rosalba fixed in an incomparable way. At the same time, returning a rich wealth of details on clothing and hairstyles, an expression of the taste and style of her era, a faithful cross-section of the fashion history of the first half of the 18th century. The painter is credited with the most acute portrayal of the personalities of 18th-century Venetian and European society, and her contribution to French portraiture itself is fundamental: she interpreted in an unparalleled way the ideals of grace and elegance of an entire era, that “happy life” of the nobility that has entered the collective imagination and with which we identify the Ancien Régime.

For nearly half a century, the courts of Europe sought to snap up his services, yet despite frequent invitations and generous proposals, except for three sojourns at the court of the king of France, the duke of Modena, and the emperor’s court in Vienna, he remained in Venice, where he worked incessantly, all his life.

36 miniatures on ivory by Rosalba Carriera on display in Venice, Ca' Rezzonico

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