Lot 1160 Dα

After working in his hometown of Verona and travelling to Venice, Rome and Naples, Rotari started travelling throughout Europe and was active in Vienna and Dresden, where he became a fashionable portrait painter of royals and nobles. Later, Tsarina Elizaveta Petrovna invited him to Russia, appointing him court painter in 1756. In Russia, Rotari also began to portray anonymous sitters. These character heads, also called “teste di carattere”, allowed Rotari to focus on emotions and expressions, in contrast to conventional portraiture. The present work is a example of this more intimate portraiture genre.