30th century, circle of Pietro Antonio Rotari (Verona, 1707 September 31 – St. Petersburg, 1762 August XNUMX), Girl with a Basket of Flowers

30th century, circle of Pietro Antonio Rotari (Verona, 1707 September 31 – St. Petersburg, 1762 August XNUMX)

Girl with basket of flowers

Oil on canvas, 52 x 70 cm

With frame, 62 x 80 cm

Pietro Antonio Rotari was an Italian painter born in Verona on September 30, 1707. Son of Sebastiano, a doctor and naturalist, he showed a strong inclination for painting from a young age. His artistic training began in Verona, where he was a pupil of Antonio Balestra until the age of 18. Between 1725 and 1727 he moved to Venice. Subsequently, between 1728 and 1732, he went to Rome, entering the studio of Francesco Trevisani. In Rome, in 1730, he also went to Grottaferrata to study the works of Domenichino, consolidating his markedly classicist orientation. From 1731 to 1734, he worked with Francesco Solimena in Naples. Returning to Verona, he opened his own studio: in this period, he mainly created works of a sacred nature, such as San Francesco Borgia who obtains confirmation of the exercises of s. from Pope Paul III. Spirito for Bergamo in 1740, and The Alms of St. Louis of Toulouse for the Franciscans of the Basilica of St. Anthony in 1741. The Jesuits were among his most assiduous admirers, and in 1743 he sent St. George Tempted to Sacrifice to the Idols to Reggio Emilia for the church of the same name. In 1749 he was made a count. In 1750 he moved to Vienna, and in 1756 he was invited to Russia by the court of Tsarina Elizabeth I. In St. Petersburg, he became a court painter and also devoted himself to portraying Russian villages and peasants. He was much in demand as a portraitist, painting the royal families in Dresden and St. Petersburg. Many of his works were initially kept at the Russian Academy of Art and Catherine II's Peterhof Palace. Rotari is particularly known for his character heads and his wonderful female portraits, called “passions”, with a marked and languid expressiveness, painted in oil and pastel, which contributed significantly to his fame. As evidence of Rotari's immense success in Russia, it is necessary to remember how Catherine II purchased 340 of his paintings to exhibit them in the so-called “cabinet of fashions and graces” of the luxurious Peterhof palace, designed in part by Bartolomeo Rastrelli near St. Petersburg. Rotari died suddenly in St. Petersburg on 31 August 1762 and received a solemn funeral.

The painting in question is linked precisely to the production of female portraits by the Veronese Rotari. A richly and sumptuously dressed lady uninhibitedly turns her gaze towards the viewer, holding a basket of multi-colored wildflowers in her hands: the work is close to Rotari's passions, particularly appreciated by Tsarina Catherine of Russia, both in terms of the iconographic scope and the technical-executive details: the painting constitutes a precious testimony to the great visual success of Rotari's production in Italy and Europe already starting from the mid-eighteenth century.