Rococo has a reputation for pink silk, swings and cupids. Behind most of these pictures, though, stands someone who paid and had very precise wishes, sometimes a royal mistress, sometimes a Venetian nobleman. One of them even asked for a bishop in the picture, and did not get him.
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How These Were Chosen
Rococo is the light, playful style the rich of Europe chose in the 1700s when they wanted pictures to charm them. It starts in Paris after 1715, when the nobles left Versailles for townhouses whose smaller rooms called for lighter pictures.
The name comes from rocaille, the curling shell ornament of those rooms. On canvas, the taste meant pale pinks and blues, curving lines, and love and leisure in a garden, painted for private clients who wanted charm more than grandeur.
The twelve pictures here are the ones the word Rococo brings to mind, with a few that carried the style to Venice, Madrid and Würzburg. Most were made for one patron, and the patron's wishes, or once a refusal, can still be read in the paint.
12. Rosalba Carriera, Self-Portrait Holding a Portrait of Her Sister (about 1715)
Two faces share this sheet. The larger one belongs to the Venetian artist Rosalba Carriera, who drew herself around 1715 looking straight out of the picture. In one hand she holds up a small portrait, and with the other she lays a brush against it.
The sheet is made in pastel, powdered pigment pressed into sticks and rubbed straight onto roughened paper. The powder sits so loosely that a knock can shake it off. That soft, dusty bloom is what princes and courts across Europe collected from her.
This self portrait had a precise destination. In Florence, Cosimo III de' Medici, the grand duke of Tuscany, was building a gallery of illustrious painters portrayed by their own hand, and he wanted Carriera in it.
That is why the small portrait matters. The face in it is her sister Giovanna, who worked as her assistant on copies and miniatures and traveled with her to Paris, Modena and Vienna. By holding Giovanna up beside her own face, Carriera brought her assistant into the grand duke's gallery as well.
At a Glance
Artist: Rosalba Carriera (1673 to 1757)
Made: About 1715
Medium: Pastel on paper
Size: 71 × 57 cm (28 × 22.4 in)
Where to see it: Uffizi Galleries, Florence (collection of artists' self-portraits)
11. Pietro Longhi, Exhibition of a Rhinoceros at Venice (probably 1751)
For the Carnival of 1751, Venice had a rhinoceros on show. Pietro Longhi, who painted the everyday life of the city, put her in a plain wooden pen, chewing, while Venetians in Carnival masks crowd the stands around her. Something is missing from her face, and the man beside the pen is holding it up.