Although Rosalba was initially trained by Antonio Balestra as painter in oils, her later triumphs as an internationally celebrated pastel portraitist obfuscated her less known early oils in a late Baroque style learned from Balestra as seen in the present small oil of a Ragazza con Pappagallo, a composition that she would later revisit and revise as the large Rococo pastel Ragazza con Pappagallo in the Chicago Art Institute (pastel on paper board, 22 ½ x 18 7/8 in/ 58 x 48 cm, fig. 2).    

While the lighter palette and expanded nudity are art of the Rococo sensibility dominant in the pastel, the oil is richer in hue, starker contrasts, and more cautious erotic implications which were primarily indicated by the iconographic elements of pearls and the parrot’s beak at her bodice.

Here too, unlike the light pastel tints of the later lighter pastel, the oil colors in this early work are reflective of Balestra’s late Baroque palette of clear blues and coral red as set between passages of  white and black light and shadow that give value and tint scales to the half-tone tints of luminous  feminine flesh.  

Further Considerations: Pending anticipated publications of studies of Rosalba’s life and art, there remains the formidable catalogue raisonné by Bernardina Sani, Rosalba Carriere, Turin, 1988; for the Chicago Ragazza con Pappagallo, cf. cat. No. 92, p. 286, and passim, as dated c. 1720, with provenance and recent critical assessments. (For Balestra cf. Andrea Tomezzoli, Antonio Balestra nel Segno della Grazia, Bergamo, 2016-27, cat. 19, p. 151 and passim.)

As for the parrot: Accompanied by a red breasted, green winged parrot that pulls her lace blouse open to expose a glimpse of delicately modulated flesh tones of a breast as set off by a string of pearls. The resultant contrast between enhance the image of politic erotic success not unknown in Venetian society, the parrot is the clincher of animate ambiguity in a small scale picture probably intended for private viewing. Then too, as a popular import, the red or red breasted parrot is frequently found in two main artistic contexts: a display of wealthy acquisitions of cultivated exotica; a symbol of visual or visible temptation as the parrot found in Dürer’s engraving of Adam and Eve and numerous versions of Susanna and the Elders. Both associate references appeal here: luxuria as erotic appeal and as token of sophisticated wealth. (For parrots, cf. inter alia Sigrid and Lothar Dittrich, Lexikon der Tiersymbole: Tiere als Sinnbilder in der Malerei des 14.-17. Jahrhunderts, Petersberg, 2004, s.v. “parrot.”)