203 - PIETRO ANTONIO ROTARI

PIETRO ANTONIO ROTARI (1707 Verona – 1762 St. Petersburg) Portrait of a Young Lady Oil on canvas. 47.5 x 35.5 cm. Framed. The paint layer features three professional retouches over three canvas tears reinforced from the reverse. The edges are lined. On the reverse, there is a label inscribed “Original by Rotari. Count Peter.” Pietro Antonio Rotari studied painting in Verona, then in Rome and Naples. Upon returning to Verona, he established his own studio and initially became known primarily as a painter of religious works. In 1749, he was granted the title of count. Via Vienna and Dresden—where he worked at the court of Augustus III and became known for his “Varie teste” series of portraits depicting various emotional expressions—he eventually arrived in Saint Petersburg. There he rose to become court painter to Empress Elizabeth and also painted portraits of Peter III and Catherine II before his death in Russia in 1762. A dark, semi-transparent veil covers her head and the upper half of her face. Her eyes gaze through the fabric and are directed at the viewer. Her head is slightly tilted, and a smile plays around her mouth—one that reveals more than it shows. The veil does not truly conceal anything; it merely slows the gaze and thereby transforms it into an event. This is precisely the secret to Rotari’s success. The female heads for which he became famous in Dresden, Vienna, and Saint Petersburg are not commissioned portraits but a genre of their own: a play on emotions, always gallant, always within the bounds of etiquette. It is not who is depicted, but what emotion is evoked, that defines the painting. After Rotari’s death, Catherine II acquired the majority of his estate; some 360 of these portraits still hang, frame after frame, in the “Cabinet of Fashions and Graces” at Peterhof Palace. The painterly quality is evident in the details: the shimmering white of the embroidered lace cape, the muted blue of the dress, the pearl earrings set against the greenish depth of the background. An all-around charming example of the type of work that established Rotari’s fame.