An Italian writes concerning her: “Nature had endowed Rosalba with lofty aspirations and a passionate soul, and her heart yearned for that response which her absence of personal attractions failed to win. She was aware of her extreme plainness; and had she ignored it, the Emperor Charles XI. enlightened her, when, turning to Bertoli, a court artist, who presented her in Vienna, he said, ‘She may be clever, Bertoli mio, this painter of thine, but she is remarkably ugly.’ But Rosalba, even if annoyed, could well afford to smile, for Charles XI. was the ugliest of men.”
While in France, Rosalba wrote a journal which was entitled “Diario degli anni 1720 e 1721. Scritto da Rosalba Carriera.” It appeared in Venice in 1793, with notes by Giovanni Vianelli, who had a fine collection of her paintings.
From Paris she went laden with honors to the imperial court at Vienna, where, besides the emperor and empress, she painted the archduchesses and others of the court. The King of Poland had a number of her pastels, which were highly valued.
Zanetti remarks: “Much of interest may be said of this celebrated and highly-gifted woman, whose spirit—in the midst of her triumphs and the brightest visions of happiness—was weighed down with the anticipation of a heavy calamity. On one occasion—when she had painted a portrait of herself, with the brow wreathed with gloomy leaves, significant of death—her friends asked why she had done this. She replied that the representation was an image of her life, and that her end would be tragic, according to the meaning here shadowed forth. This portrait was afterward in the possession of Giambattista Sartori, a brother of her famous pupil Felicità Sartori. He preserved it as a sacred relic. His sister married Von Hoffmann, and painted with much success at the court of the Elector of Saxony.”
It seemed, indeed, that the presentiment of a fast approaching and terrible affliction, amid the strict seclusion in which Rosalba lived, had taken possession of this noble and gifted spirit. It might be that her solitary existence tended to sadden her temperament, and deepen its natural inclination to melancholy. The forewarning, of which even in youth she felt conscious, was mournfully fulfilled ere she had long passed her prime. Before she was fifty years of age she became totally blind, as she had feared. Her mind struggled long with weakness and incurable sorrow, but sank at last, and the light of reason too departed.
The latter part of her life was a blank, yet she lingered to old age, dying in Venice, on the 15th of April, 1757. Amid the universal expression of unaffected sorrow and commiseration, she was buried in the church of San Sista a Modesta. She left considerable property. Her grave is still pointed out to the traveler as the last resting-place of one whose genius was an ornament to Venice.
Many of her works have been engraved. The Dresden Gallery has the largest collection, numbering one hundred and fifty-seven pieces.
The engraving of Rosalba’s portrait shows a youthful face, with a pleased expression of childish innocence. The hair is brushed back from the forehead on the top, but curls cluster around the face on the sides; earrings are worn, and the corsage is low. The eyes are dark, the forehead is high, and the whole head has a graceful air.
Like Rosalba Carriera, Ippolita Venier was a native of Venice, though she lived at Udina with the painter her father. In 1765 she painted the Adoration of the Kings, for a church in the sea-born city. Felicità Sartori was a pupil of Rosalba, and worked in Dresden, whither she went with her husband.
Apollonia de Forgue, born in 1767, assisted her husband, Seydelman, with his pictures. She was a member of the Academy in Dresden.