(Verona 1707–1762 Saint Petersburg)
A young woman sleeping in a chair,
oil on canvas, 44.5 x 34.5 cm, unframed

Provenance:
Ambassador Giuseppe Cosmelli, circa 1950;
thence by descent to the present owner

The present portrait numbers among those depictions of young women for which Rotari gained fame throughout Europe. The artist painted a large number of such typological head studies, which enjoyed great popularity, because of their sentiment and brilliance, for the courts in Dresden, Vienna, and St. Petersburg. In his heads of the Apostles dating from his early period, the artist had already sought to differentiate between their temperaments and achieve a diversity of expressions. Leaving religious art and historical painting behind him, Rotari developed an entirely autonomous genre, a refined and elegant play of emotions that always observed the etiquette and was marked by graceful femininity. This was perfectly in keeping with the aesthetic needs prevalent in Russia in the first half of the 18th century.

In 1756, following sojourns in Vienna and Dresden, Rotari accepted an invitation to Russia, attracted by the great wealth and splendour of the court in St. Petersburg, which was then a ‘new Byzantium’, even richer than Dresden and still developing. He became court painter to Tsarina Elizabeth I, who spared no expense in order to keep him in St. Petersburg. Rotari was commissioned to paint portraits of young women for the Cabinet of Fashions and Graces that were meant to depict the diversity of Russia’s peoples. In the course of this project, Rotari executed 360 pictures of common Russian women for Elizabeth, as well as an additional 50 portraits, which she presented to the Academy of Fine Arts of St. Petersburg. Elisabeth’s pictures were to be installed in the Peterhof Palace; today approximately 40 works are still to be found in Arkhangelskoye Palace. Rotari was also a favourite of Peter III and Catherine II. He portrayed the latter and she subsequently also bought his series of portraits, using them to decorate a room at Peterhof. These idealised portraits were extremely fascinating because they exhibited the soul’s entire spectrum of emotional nuances and displayed a delicate sophistication. The idea of decorating the central Gala Hall of Peterhof Palace in this way was worthy of a young and brilliant monarch who wished to introduce the refined European etiquette at her own court.

Different from Liotard’s pictures of women, all of which are portraits, and from those of Rosalba Carrieras, who painted allegories and portraits, Rotari’s sitters have no specific identity. They are ‘soul paintings’, as Charles Le Brun theoretically described the genre in his book Expression of the Passions of the Soul for the Academy. In Russia, the pictures within this new genre were referred to as ‘passions’ (‘Настроения’). Frequently, these female heads show a moment from everyday life: a young bride with an orange branch in her hair, a sick woman, a seamstress, a spinster, a sleeping woman. But what dominates them most and makes them so outstanding is the refined and differentiated expression of their eyes: mostly, the pupil is widened, a sign of deep compassion and momentary psychological presence. Sometimes, the expression tends to be cunning, sleepy, coquettish, or silently suffering; occasionally, their gaze is questioning or focusing on some vaguely pleasant vision. These graceful protagonists were almost always portrayed from life and depicted in their national costumes while representing different social strata: a graceful servant, a charming maid, a modestly dressed peasant woman, a lady-in-waiting in luxurious furs. The young woman is rendered here in a porcelain-like manner of painting and with a cool palette. In terms of technique and composition, the painting’s quality suggests that Rotari had arrived at the zenith of his abilities as a painter.

Another version of the sleeping girl is conserved in the Peterhof Palace and there are further versions known, in which the detail of the dress changes, and in which her positioning is reversed.

Pietro Rotari came from a noble family and initially only studied painting as a pastime. He was trained by Antonio Balestra in Verona and later travelled to Venice and Rome, where he became a student of Francesco Trevisani. Between 1731 and 1734 he worked in the studio of Francesco Solimena in Naples. Back in Verona, he opened his own workshop and acquired a reputation as a painter of crowded altarpieces, betraying influences from Roman and Neapolitan 17th-century painting. Around 1751 he travelled to Vienna, where he was able to study the works of Jean-Etienne Liotard. He was impressed by their clear, painterly smoothness, which had a lasting impact on his subsequent work. In Vienna he executed portraits for the members of the House of Saxony and paintings for Empress Maria Theresa. He subsequently left Vienna for Dresden, where he worked at the court of Frederick August III, who was also King of Poland. From Dresden he moved on to the Russian court. Rotari’s residence in St. Petersburg rapidly became a landmark that was visited by illustrious guests to the capital on their sightseeing tours. He was a major influence on Russian portraiture and founded a private school. Among his pupils were the French painter Luis Tocqué and the Russian painters Fjodor Rokotov and Alexej Antropov.