Rosalba Carriera

Rosalba Carriera made pastel into a fashionable medium for portraits. Her pictures are soft and luminous, with delicate colour, quick strokes and a shimmering touch on lace, silk and skin. She was one of the most sought-after portraitists in eighteenth-century Europe.

She was born in Venice in 1673 and began by painting miniatures on ivory for snuffbox lids before turning to pastel. Her portraits were collected by Grand Tour visitors, and in 1720 to 1721 she was a sensation in Paris, where she drew the young Louis XV and met Antoine Watteau. She also worked in Vienna. Besides portraits she made allegories of the seasons, the elements and the continents, such as America. The Gemäldegalerie in Dresden holds a large group of her pastels, and her self-portraits are in the Uffizi and elsewhere. She died in Venice in 1757.

In A Young Lady with a Parrot, look at the lightness of the touch: the colour sits on the surface like powder.