Rosalba Carriera was an important Rococo painter and specialised in portrait painting. She famously used pastel colours and indulged in self portraits. She was in fact the first female painter to use pastel colours. Thus, her paintings had a soft blended nature to them. Rococo being a successor of the Baroque style, sheds light on curved and counter curves. Carriera particularly emerged during a period of increasing women's mobility and visibility. She catered to the high class European society and thus made portraits of high society, sensual allegories and famously a series of self portraiture.
Rosalba Carriera's "Self Portrait" of 1746 was painted when the artist was in her seventies. She had always been known to portray her self images in a much more realistic way. She drew her features in a realistic manner to capture her exactness. This bust length image depicts herself in a modest and restrained clothing with a wreath of Laurel leaves on her head. There is a melancholic and serious expression on her face. The Laurel wreath also expressed sadness. The muted browns show a depressive state. According to her biographies, she had fallen into depression after she went blind. Apparently, she painted their particular picture after going through a cataract operation. Looking closely, her dual coloured eyes probably indicate her blindness.
Rosalba Carriera’s Self Portrait, as traditional interpretation shows, is a deeply personal and tragic reflection of her old age blindness and suffering. Micheal Levey describes it as ‘Muse of Tragedy’. Carriera’s biography also supports her loss of closed ones, loss of her eyesight. But some recent scholars challenge this biographical interpretation, rather show technical mastery carefully crafted. They call it a statement of artistic identity and intellectual authority. It becomes more a poetic and humanistic self portrait. Christine Oldridge shows the altered eyes as representation of blind poet Homer, whose blindness was associated with extraordinary wisdom. Restrained colour palette and loose brushwork become a conscious attempt to place herself within the distinguished lineage of Venetian artistic masters.
