1 / 1

download image
This image is in the public domain. You can copy, modify and distribute this image, even for commercial purposes. Learn more about our image policies.

Shown from the shoulders up, a young woman with pale skin, dark hair, and wearing a muted turquoise bodice over a white shirt, peers at us against an olive-green background in this vertical portrait painting. Her shoulders are angled slightly to our left, and she tips her head away from us, over her right shoulder, to our left. With her chin jutting a bit toward us, she looks at us from the corners of her heavy-lidded, dark green eyes under arched brows. She has a straight nose, and her smooth cheeks are flushed. The corners of her closed, peach-colored lips are barely pulled back in a faint smile. Her chestnut-brown hair is pulled back, and short curls frame her face in front of her ears. She wears a white, ruffled flower with a white bud and deep green leaves in her hair over her left temple, to our right. A dark rope or twisted fabric encircles her neck, and she gathers the long ends in her right hand, to our left, at her chest. One long curl wraps around the fabric, to our left. Her chest is smooth, and the backs of her fingers are touched with coral pink. Her low-cut, muted blue bodice is worn over a full-sleeved, white shirt pleated below the shoulders. She is lit from our left so casts a shadow against the olive-green wall to our right.

Pietro Rotari

A Girl with a Flower in Her Hair, 1760/1762

Not on View

Medium

oil on canvas

Dimensions

overall: 45.8 x 35.4 cm (18 1/16 x 13 15/16 in.)

Credit Line

Samuel H. Kress Collection

Accession Number

1939.1.108

Artists / Makers

Pietro Rotari (painter) Venetian, 1707 - 1762

Image Use

This image is in the public domain.
Read our full Open Access policy for images .

Provenance

Said to have been given by Empress Catherine II of Russia [1729-1796] to Prince Aleksandr Andreyevich Bezborodko [1747-1799], her secretary of petitions and later imperial chancellor; given by him to Prince Viktor Pavlovich Kochubei [1768-1834], Russian diplomat and statesman.[1] (Count Alessandro Contini Bonacossi, Rome); purchased July 1932 by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York;[2] gift 1939 to NGA.

[1] In notations in the Samuel H. Kress Foundation records, NGA curatorial files. These come from the bill of sale (see note 2), which reads "Two Portraits of Young Girls...By Count Pietro Rotari...From the Royal Palace of Catherine of Russia...Were given as a present to Prince Besborodko, Chancellor of State, from whom they went to The Collection of Prince Kociubey, Hetman of Ucraine."

[2] The date of purchase is often given as 1939, which is, however, the date the painting entered the National Gallery. The bill of sale for several paintings, a book of drawings, a sculpture, two vases, and a velvet cope is dated 29 July 1932 (copy in NGA curatorial records). Roberto Longhi's expert opinion on the back of a Kress photograph (NGA curatorial files) is dated November 1932, and Alfred M. Frankfurter. "Eighteenth Century Venice in a New York Collection," The Fine Arts 19 (December 1932): 10, repro. 7, documents the painting in the Kress Collection by December of that year. See also The Kress Collection Digital Archive, https://kress.nga.gov/Detail/objects/46.

Associated Names

Bezborodko, Aleksandr Andreyevich, Prince
Catherine II of Russia
Contini Bonacossi, Alessandro, Count
Kochubei, Viktor Pavlovich, Prince
Kress Foundation, Samuel H.

Technical Summary

The support is a medium-weight, plain-weave fabric with irregular threads throughout and is identical in thickness and weave to that of the pendant. A thick white ground was applied unevenly with a broad brush and toned with a reddish brown imprimatura. The oil paint has been applied evenly in layers of medium thickness and brushed wet-into-wet. The sequence of the paint layers corresponds to that of the companion: the composition was blocked in and a brown imprimatura applied to the area designated as background; the figure was painted wet-into-wet, with delicate blended brushstrokes in the face and broader handling for the costume; the flower and details of the face were completed last and impasto highlights added as required. Examination by infrared reflectography suggested that the composition was laid out with paint containing carbon black pigments. It also revealed that numerous compositional changes were made during the evolution of the final design: the sitter originally leaned against what appears to be the back of a chair; her bottom lip was originally lower than its present position; her hand was added after the costume was completed.

The painting has been restretched onto a stretcher slightly larger than the painted surface. There are small losses and abrasion throughout, which have been extensively inpainted. The varnish is very slightly discolored. About 1933 the painting was relined, discolored varnish was removed, and the painting was restored by Stephen Pichetto.

Bibliography

1932: Frankfurter, Alfred M. "Eighteenth Century Venice in a New York Collection." The Fine Arts 19 (December 1932): 10, repro. 7.

1941: Preliminary Catalogue of Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1941: 174, no. 219.

1942: Book of Illustrations. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1942: 243, repro. 181.

1959: Paintings and Sculpture from the Samuel H. Kress Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1959: 240, repro.

1965: Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 117.

1968: National Gallery of Art. European Paintings and Sculpture, Illustrations. Washington, 1968: 104, repro.

1969: Nikolenko, Lada. "Pietro Rotari in Russia and America." The Connoisseur 171 (July 1969): 195, fig. 1.

1972: Fredericksen, Burton B., and Federico Zeri. Census of Pre-Nineteenth Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections. Cambridge, Mass., 1972: 179.

1973: Shapley, Fern Rusk. Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: Italian Schools, XVI-XVIII Century. London, 1973: 157, fig. 299.

1975: European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1975: 310, repro.

1979: Shapley, Fern Rusk. Catalogue of the Italian Paintings. 2 vols. Washington, 1979: 1:412; 2:pl. 292.

1985: European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 356, repro.

1996: De Grazia, Diane, and Eric Garberson, with Edgar Peters Bowron, Peter M. Lukehart, and Mitchell Merling. Italian Paintings of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 1996: 244-248, color repro. 247.

2012: Percival, Melissa. Fragonard and the Fantasy Figure: Painting the Imagination. Burlington, Vt., 2012: xii, 150, fig. 4.19.