Serial Flirtations: Rotari’s Muses

Pasadena, CA—The Norton Simon Museum presents an intimate exhibition examining Pietro Rotari (1707–1762), an illustrious Italian artist who found success and fortune in Vienna and beyond, ultimately becoming court painter to Empress Elizabeth of Russia. Serial Flirtations: Rotari’s Muses brings together eight paintings from the Simon holdings attributed to Rotari and his studio, including his iconic Young Girl Writing a Love Letter. Six rarely displayed character studies, all of which were returned to the artist’s family after his death in St. Petersburg and retained until the 1970s by the Cartolari family, his heirs, will be featured as a set. As a whole, the installation commemorates Rotari’s inclination to summon his muses and celebrates the 310th anniversary of the artist’s birth.

Rotari began his career in his hometown of Verona. As he gained recognition, he traveled widely throughout Italy, studying the works of Venetian, Roman and Neapolitan artists. In these early years, he painted primarily religious and historical subjects. But by 1750, when he was called to Vienna to work for Empress Maria Theresa, and then Dresden, where he was summoned by King Augustus III, his attention would turn to painting bust-length portraits of elegant members of their courts. In 1755, Rotari was summoned by Empress Elizabeth of Russia to work in St. Petersburg, where he and his prolific studio would produce hundreds of depictions of young girls, all of them demonstrating varying degrees of emotion—subtle, but clearly legible. The painter’s virtuosity for such work earned him great acclaim, both for his talents and his prodigious output.

Not until after Rotari’s death were his works seen in the light of seriality. Sometimes hundreds of his paintings would be installed on one wall, from ceiling to floor, like a contact sheet of photographs from a modeling agency session. While some of his portraits in Dresden may already have been seen as tiles of a larger mosaic, Catherine II’s purchase of 300 paintings by Rotari and his students for her “Cabinet of the Muses” at the Peterhof Palace and her other residences sealed Rotari’s fame as a painter of character heads.

Serial Flirtations: Rotari’s Muses is organized by Carol Togneri, Chief Curator at the Norton Simon Museum. In conjunction with the exhibition, Togneri will present the lecture In Praise of Women: Pietro Rotari in Russia on Saturday, March 18^th at 4:00 p.m. Information is at www.nortonsimon.org/events.

IMAGE CREDIT: Young Girl Writing a Love Letter, c. 1755, Pietro Antonio Rotari (Italian, 1707-1762), Oil on canvas, 33-3/8 x 27 in. (84.8 x 68.6 cm), Norton Simon Art Foundation