Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Charles Sackville, 2nd Duke Of Dorset



Charles Sackville, 2nd Duke Of Dorset, Rosalba Carriera

Carriera began her career doing lace patterns and painting miniature portraits on ivory lids of snuffboxes before she started doing portraits like the one above. Her pastel portraits were so widely admired that  she was awarded honorary membership of Rome's Academy of Saint Luke of 1705. She was later admitted to the academies in Bologna and Florence. In 1720, she traveled to Paris, where she made a portrait of young Louis XV and was elected to the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture.

It's very hard for me to imagine that this is pastel. Everything I've done with pastel is much less detailed and finished looking. The way the fabric looks in this is amazing. Then again, back then they had better quality pastels that were more buttery and less chalky so it was easier to create such effects.

(All information I've obtained about the piece I got from Art History vol.II by Marilyn Stokstad)



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