DIDIER AARON Paintings × Drawings × Sculpture

CONTE PIETRO ROTARI ( 1707 – 1762 St Petersburg)

A pair: La Dormeuse and La Liseuse

Both pastel on paper mounted on canvas, c.1751-6 ( period) Each: 47 x 36 cm In their original carved silvered frames

PROVENANCE: Prince Johann Georg von Sachsen (1869-1938); Generalkonsul Georg Baschwitz; his sale, Antiquitätenhaus Wertheim, , 25./26. March 1930, lots 238 and 239; private collection; .

LITERATURE: Dr Max Osborn, Sammlung Generalkonsul Baschwitz, Berlin, 1930, Berlin, 1930, sales catalogue, entries 238 and 239, ill. Tafel II. Neil Jeffares, Dictionary of Pastellists before 1800, online edition, March 2019, J.631.208 and 209.

This pair of pastels by Rotari can be grouped with two others with the same unusual frames and similar dimensions: Jeune femme (pastel, 46 x 35.5 cm; Jeffares, J.631.202, ill.) which is labelled ‘Secundogenitur’, the provenance of which Neil Jeffares gives as Schloß Moritzburg, near Dresden, and another Jeune femme (pastel, 47 x 36 cm; Jeffares, J.631.206, ill.). The frames of the latter two are gilt, rather than silvered, as on the present pair, possibly to fit a different interior scheme, or they may have been gilt at a later stage. According to the sales catalogue of Sammlung Generalkonsul Baschwitz (Berlin, 1930), this pair of pastels was from the collection of Prince Johann Georg von Sachsen (1869-1938), and had labels attached to the backs with the inscription ‘Sekundogenitur’ [sic] and crown, another link to the one above. Secundo-geniture defines the property rights of the second- born son and his line in princely houses. Prince Johann Georg von Sachsen was the second son of George, King of (1832-1904), so it is plausible that the label ‘Secundogenitur’ and crown refer his collection, and that this pair entered his collection by descent from Rotari’s original patron at the Saxon court. Georg Baschwitz, a Berlin industrialist and art collector, was particularly interested works from the late-eighteenth to mid-nineteenth century, and the sale of his collection of over 658 lots included furniture, bronze objects, textiles, glass, porcelain, miniatures and paintings, amongst which were works by Anton Graff, Johann Baptist Lampi, Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein, Rosalba Carriera, Philip Hacckert, and altogether four works by Pietro Rotari. La Dormeuse is an independent interpretation of a work of the same theme by François Boucher. La Liseuse is a variant with numerous alterations of an oil painting at Peterhof (ill. Polazzo, 1990, fig. 208) and perhaps relates to works of the same subject by Liotard, although of a different composition. Rotari studied under in his native Verona and he remained in his studio until he was 18. He then moved to from 1725-7 before spending four years as a student of Francesco Trevisiani in Rome. From 1731-4 he studied with in after which he returned to Verona, setting up his own studio and school. There he painted altarpieces, such as Four Martyrs, 1745 (Church of the Ospedale di S Giacomo, Verona) but also studied smaller, more intimate paintings of the Roman baroque. Around 1751 he travelled to Vienna, where he studied the pastels by Jean- Etienne Liotard, and then around 1752/3 he left for Dresden, according to his biographer, ‘to admire the extraordinary collection of paintings at the court there.’ He stayed until 1756 when he moved to the court of the tsars in St Petersburg. Letters, only recently studied, between Joseph Anton Gabaleon, Graf Wackerbarth- Salmour, minister at the Saxon court, and Maria Josepha, daughter of the Polish king and Dauphine of France, as well as Marie Maximilienne de Silvestre, daughter of the painter Louis de Silvestre the Younger, reader to the Dauphine in Paris and pursuing painting and drawing herself, reveal that Rotari, during his first two years in Dresden, produced large paintings for the court’s catholic church and portraits of the prince elector Friedrich Christian, brother of the Dauphine of France and designated successor to Augustus III, and his wife, Maria Antonia of Bavaria. Rotari further painted portraits of significant figures at the Dresden court, including Count Brühl (lost), and the papal nuncio at the Saxon court, Count Ignazio Accoramboni (1706-1793; portrait: oil on canvas, 88 x 69 cm, ill. Weber, p. 11, destr. 1945), both owners of several works by Rotari.

A pastel on canvas which had remained in the Royal House of Saxony until ‘well into the twentieth century’ was published in The Burlington Magazine (Vol. 118, Dec. 1976) in the supplement ‘Notable Works of Art Now on the Market’: The Pilgrim Girl (70 x 55.5 cm, then with Julius Böhler, ) which was still in its original frame (ill. without frame). It was described as being painted in wet and dry pastel on very fine canvas, a technique allowing the artist to model the flesh softly, and giving a ‘scintillating texture to certain areas like the trees in the background, the grey cloth, the shell, the pearls.’ Rotari’s reputation earned him an invitation from Elizabeth, Empress of Russia, which he accepted, becoming court painter to the Empress in 1756, a position he held until his death six years later. There he became best known for his teste di carrattere, portraits of young women, mostly oils and some pastels. He painted a series of portraits for Prince Nicolay Yusupov (1750-1831) for his estate Archangelskoye, such as Villager in a Fur Hat (formerly in the Youssoupov collection). A group of fifty was presented by Elisabeth to the new Russian Academy of Art and the walls of Catherine II’s ‘Cabinet of the Muses and Graces’ at Peterhof Palace are virtually covered with 367 of his portraits, which she purchased after the deaths of Empress Elizabeth and Rotari. We are grateful to Neil Jeffares who accepts the attribution having inspected the pastels.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Marco Polazzo, Pietro Rotari, pittore veronese del Settecento, Verona, 1990, fig. 208. Gregor J.M. Weber (ed.), Pietro Graf Rotari in Dresden: ein italienischer Maler am Hof König Augustus III, exhibition catalogue (ex. 9 Nov. 1999 to 9 Jan. 2000, Semperbau), Dresden, 1999. Notable Works of Art Now on the Market,’ The Burlington Magazine, Vol. 118, Dec. 1976), plate XXXVII.

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