59 Emanuel von Wittelsbach – for portraits of Venice’s most beautiful women, especially those who were not only famous for their charm but whose personal lifestyles breathed colour and vivacity into the city scene. For example, Rosalba received several requests for portraits of the renowned salon hostess, Lucrezia Basadonna Mocenigo, including commissions from JohannWilhelm II, Elector Palatine (conveyed by his secretary, the writer Giorgio Maria Rapparini from Bologna) and Christian Ludwig II, Count of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, whose emissary was Hans Bötticher.14 During a visit to Venice, Frederick IV, King of Denmark and Norway, asked Rosalba for miniature portraits on ivory of twelve Venetian noblewomen. According to Pietro Del Negro, these included a lady Basadonna, Marietta Correr (Maria Donà, wife of Filippo Corner di San Marcuola), Maria Vendramin Zenobio, possibly Elena Correr Piscopia in Foscari, andMaria Civran Labia.15 These initial commissions led tomore patrician ladies sitting for their portraits, one of whom was Caterina Sagredo Barbarigo. Married twice – first, in 1732, to Antonio Pesaro, and then, in 1739, following the early death of her first husband, to Gregorio Barbarigo – she was the daughter of a family of patrons and collectors, and commissioned her first portrait from Rosalba herself, to promote her own celebrity (fig. 2).16 Educated, lively, and eager for adventure – as can easily be seen from the pose in which Rosalba chose to portray her – she was famous for her travels abroad. In Venice she was admired by foreigners, even learning English with the help of Robert Darcy, Fourth Earl of Holderness, the British ambassador to the city on the lagoon.17 Meanwhile, the French ambassador, François-Joachim de Bernis, subsequently remembered her as a dear friend, whom he sorely missed on his return home.18 LadyMaryWortleyMontagu wrote to the cultured Venetian, connoisseur of beauty, and traveller Francesco Algarotti, also an acquaintance of Carriera’s: “J’aime beaucoupMadame de Barbarigo. Elle a une bonté de Cœur qui m’enchante” (I like Madame Barbarigo very much. She has a delightfully kind heart).19 Algarotti, for his part, praised her outstanding abilities as a hostess, welcoming refined and elegant company to her salon. Her circle of friends and acquaintances was large; Lady Montagu noted, for example: “Yesterday evening at the Academy with Mme Barbarigo in a company of three or four hundred people.”20 Caterina Sagredo Barbarigo felt just as much at home at large receptions of this type as in the smaller circles that gathered at her own casini. Madame du Boccage reports that she had been “au casin de Mme. Barbarigo”21 in San Basso and had met her translator Luisa Bergalli there (of whommore later), along with the latter’s husband, Gasparo Gozzi, whom she had already got to know a few days earlier at the home of Filippo Farsetti. The casino which Barbarigo had rented in Giudecca, which had a large garden that she had transformed into a stable called “the Cavallerizza” to indulge her great passion for riding, had been closed down by the Inquisitori di Stato (Venetian State Inquisition) in 1747 to prevent any hobnobbing with foreigners holding diplomatic posts.22 What links did Rosalba have with these patrician women? It must be borne in mind that Rosalba was no frequenter of aristocratic salons, not even those visited by the ladies she portrayed. What she shared with some clients was a bond of mutual respect, while others expressed their appreciation through services or favours, renting their houses in the country to her, for example, or helping her to dispatch her own works to clients farther afield. Despite this, Rosalba did not feel drawn to their circle, perhaps because of the difference in social class, but maybe also because of differences in character and attitudes. She wished, as Pietro Del Negro puts it, to embody “amiddle-class version”23 of the female active pursuits that had emerged in Venice, thanks to its broad and socially mixed public arena. A Resolutely Middle-Class Sociability We may assume, then, that, for her foreign clients, Rosalba Carriera epitomised the Venetian lifestyle – a lifestyle which she interpreted in her own way and reflected abundantly in her correspondence. She shared not only her midday and evening meals with friends, foreigners, and a circle of Venetian acquaintances – including, above all, her good friend Tonino (Antonio Maria Zanetti) – but also walks, visits to exhibitions and galleries, and the festivities of the Carnival season. The merry band mingled with the spectating crowds at regattas, frequented cafés, and enjoyed the festivals and events that made Venice famous as a place of entertainment. “On Tuesday, go wearing a mask again, for my sake,”24 Tonino wrote to her on 21 September 1704, while away from Venice for a while. For the most part, the circle of friends who clustered around Rosalba, her sisters, and her mother represented the professional middle classes, not the titled ladies of leisure. It included the medical doctor Marco Musalo, notaries Carlo and Gabriele Gabrieli, the Boschetti family, painters Balestra and Antonio Dall’Agata, as well as the faithful Tonino, and was a company that radiated both cultural sophistication and joie de vivre. Corresponding with Rosalba from Rome, the painter and miniaturist Felice Ramelli mentioned their mutual friends in Venice. In his letter of 12 January 1704, he recalled the pleasures the group had enjoyed together and regretted not being with them: “If I were in Venice, we would share an omelette and sausage.”25 Christian Cole, too, secretary to the British ambassador in Venice, wrote
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