Venice / c. 1730
A Young Lady with a Parrot
Rosalba Carriera paired a poised young sitter with a blue parrot that tugs at the gauze edging her bodice. The bird shifts an intimate gesture away from the woman while preserving its suggestive charge.
The joke depends on restraint. Carriera’s sitter remains composed while the parrot introduces motion and mischief, letting a fashionable portrait behave like a Rococo allegory.
A CLOSER LOOK
Carriera made the work around 1730 in pastel on blue laid paper, later mounted on a laminated paper board. The sheet measures 60 by 50 centimetres. Pastel allowed her to build soft transitions and saturated color without the drying process of oil paint.
The Art Institute describes the work as a meeting of Carriera’s two main modes: individualized portraits and generalized allegorical figures. The sitter’s identity remains uncertain. She may have been a young Englishwoman, perhaps one of Lord Manchester’s daughters, but the museum does not present that proposal as settled.
The parrot supplies the picture’s visual conceit. Its beak pulls back the gauzy fabric at the sitter’s bodice, transferring the act of exposure to a mischievous animal. Her composed expression and elaborate dress continue to support the decorum of portraiture while the bird changes the social temperature of the image.
Carriera achieved unusual success and influence as a woman working in eighteenth-century Italy and France. The museum connects this mature pastel’s color and vaporous handling with the spread of Rococo grace and seduction. Its recorded ownership begins with a probable British private collection by 1896; the sitter’s name and the work’s earliest movements remain undocumented.
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Art Institute of ChicagoA Young Lady with a ParrotArt Institute of ChicagoArtworks API record for A Young Lady with a ParrotOriginal explanation based on the sources above. Images carry their own reuse terms.