Celebrated both in eighteenth-century Venice as well as across Europe, Rosalba Carriera breathed extraordinary new life into the medium of pastel. The present set of Four Seasons, which in addition to her sensitive portraiture were amongst her most popular subjects, are exemplary of her highly sophisticated art.
Rosalba’s very first paintings were executed on snuff boxes. Subsequently she turned her attention to portraiture, painting first on ivory before turning to pastel around 1700, and soon became renowned for her visages of some of the most illustrious personages of her age. Prominent foreign visitors to Venice—from the young sons of the nobility undertaking the Grand Tour to diplomats—sought out her work. Even in this early period, no less than Maximilian II of Bavaria, Frederick IV of Denmark, and Augustus the Strong, King of Poland and Elector of Saxony, sought out commissions from her, the latter of whom acquired a large group of her pastels for his private collection. So great was her fame that the young king of France, Louis XIV invited her to the French court to produce portraits of his family members.
Rosalba’s pastel technique is characterised by its supreme smoothness and the richness with which she rendered textures and light. She painted using swift white brushstrokes laid over other colours to obtain such light effects, creating highly atmospheric contrasts. Among Rosalba’s most intriguing works are the series of self-portraits, some of which now reside in the Museo del Settecento in Ca’ Rezzonico in Venice, while others are scattered in other collections, such as the self-portrait of 1740 now in Windsor Castle. Rosalba’s paintings distinguish themselves for their compositional clarity, her figures’ elegant poses, and her painstaking attention to details of textiles, in particular lace, as well as other accompanying attributes meaningful to her sitters. Moreover, Rosalba possessed an uncanny ability to penetrate her sitters’ psychologies, which she effectively translated into their distinctive physiognomies, creating an effect of intense pictorial realism, giving the viewer the sense that they are confronting not a mere portrait but the very person portrayed themselves.
As noted above, Rosalba represented the Four Seasons on a number of occasions, often exploring variations in poses and attributes. Perhaps best known of this group of works are the cycle in the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg, painted around 1726, and the one in the Royal Collection in London, which was commissioned by Joseph Smith and created between 1725 and 1735. Other similar cycles included Allegories of the Four Elements (Air, Water, Fire, Earth), the most renowned of which was painted between 1741 and 1743 for Francesco Stoppani, the Apostolic Nuncio to the Venetian Senate, and today housed in the Galleria Corsini in Rome.
Much as in Rosalba’s portraits of women, the allegorical figures are rendered in graceful yet sensual poses, and a great deal of attention has been lavished on the representation of the fabrics. The draperies, pearls, and lace embellishments glow in the vivid light in which they are rendered, as do the fruits, flowers, and the especially fetching rabbit featured in Autumn, which huddles in the figure’s arms. The skilfully turned pose of Autumn enhances the depth of the scene, while her pale skin and blonde hair create a dramatic sense of chiaroscuro against the dark blue background, into which the grapes at right seem to delicately blend.
Winter is presented with extreme sensuality. Her brown hair is punctuated by coppery reflections and is further adorned with a flower and exquisite pearl jewellery rendered in white lead strokes. The young woman lifts the diaphanous fabric of her dress to reveal the porcelain quality of her skin. She is draped in an exquisitely rendered fur wrap of iridescent grey hues, warming her against the cold of the season she represents.
Summer is a unicum owing to its iconographical inventions, not found in any of Rosalba’s other versions of the series. The young woman, with a playful, knowing smile, holds a bunch of peaches encircled in a white napkin, as if she were proffering them to the beholder. The attention to detail in the representation of the fruit’s skin is particularly sensitive, while the leaves springing from the fruits enhance the sense of painting’s depth. The lace adorned dress is enhanced by Rosalba’s painting technique, which carefully articulates the innumerable folds of the costume.
Spring is presented as an attractive young woman, the only of the four dressed in a low-cut dress that offers a glimpse of her neck and one of her breasts. She looks directly to the beholder with a kindly smile gaze; the lines defining her figure are smooth, her skin is pale, and her cheeks flushed in a delicate pink. Simple and linear, yet at the same time delicate and harmonious, the work’s sprightly colours enliven the light-blue background.
The works were most likely acquired in Italy by William Legge, 2nd Earl of Dartmouth, who undertook an extensive Grand Tour between 1752–54, visiting Rome, Naples, Paestum, and Pisa. He sat for portraits by Batoni and amassed an enormous art collection including works by Salvator Rosa, Dughet, and Benefial, as well as around seventy works by Richard Wilson. Although Dartmouth did not visit Venice, it seems highly likely that such a voracious collector acquired the present works, whose efforts were unsurpassed by his descendants.