Portrait of a Gentleman

This painting belongs to the artistic maturity of Rosalba Carriera. She was a Venetian painter who first worked as a miniaturist and then, after a stay in Paris in about 1720, became famous as a portrait painter. She expressed the ideal of grace and elegance of the high society of her time and was very successful in the courts all over Europe.
In this portrait the gentleman is wearing a brown chamber robe, a colour much in vogue in the eighteenth century, over an embroidered silk coat and a white scarf.
The large filmy wig seems to have just been powdered, an impression rendered by the masterly use of pastel, a technique in which Rosalba Carriera was a great virtuoso.