Knowra Rosalba Carriera Rosalba Carriera Rosalba Carriera (1673–1757) was a Venetian painter whose luminous pastel portraits helped make pastel a fashionable medium among European elites in the early eighteenth century.
Pastel : A drawing medium made from pigment bound into sticks, producing marks with a soft, powdery surface. Carriera made pastel a prestigious medium for finished portraits, not merely preparatory studies.
Pastel technique : The methods of applying, layering, and fixing pastel pigment on a support. Carriera’s delicate modeling depended on controlling pastel’s loose, blendable pigment.
Antonio Balestra : An Italian painter from Verona who worked in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Carriera trained with Balestra, who helped shape her early artistic formation.
Portrait of Louis XV as a Child : A pastel portrait of the young French king made by Rosalba Carriera during her Paris stay. It demonstrates how her pastel style served royal representation.
Pastel portraiture : Portraiture made primarily with pastel, a dry medium of powdered pigment bound into sticks. Carriera’s popularity helped turn this practice into a sought-after form of elite portraiture.
Rococo : An eighteenth-century European style marked by lightness, ornament, asymmetry, and refined intimacy. Its elegant, airy taste helps explain the appeal of her pastel portraits.
Pastel paper : A textured paper designed to grip dry pigment and support pastel marks. Its surface helped retain the layered colors in her works.
Marietta Carriera : An Italian painter and daughter of Rosalba Carriera, who assisted in her family’s artistic practice. Their shared studio and family life formed part of Carriera’s working world.
Portrait of Augustus the Strong : A pastel portrait of Augustus the Strong by Rosalba Carriera. The portrait connects her technique to court patronage and dynastic image-making.
Maurice Quentin de La Tour : A French Rococo portraitist renowned for large, highly finished pastel portraits. His later prominence reflects the prestige pastel portraiture gained in the generation after Carriera.
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