Italy / c. 1710
A Woman Putting Flowers in Her Hair
The Cleveland Museum of Art catalogs A Woman Putting Flowers in Her Hair as portrait miniature (Italy · c. 1710).
Its extraordinary thickness indicates that this is one of Carriera's earliest experiments painting on ivory.
A CLOSER LOOK
The museum identifies this portrait miniature as watercolor on ivory in a tortoiseshell pique-point frame and credits Rosalba Carriera (Italian, 1675–1757).
The museum's collection notes: Scholars generally agree that Rosalba Carriera (1675-1757) developed the art of painting miniatures on ivory, in place of the traditional support of vellum, a fine animal skin. Although she became famous as a pastel painter, in her early career, Carriera decorated ivory snuff boxes-containers used to hold powdered tobacco taken by sniffing up the nostrils-for tourists. This miniature likely served as a lid to a snuff box, due to its elliptical shape in contrast to the oval or occasionally round shapes of most other miniatures. Although painters of ivory snuff boxes used watercolor, the same media artists used on vellum, the finished images on
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The Cleveland Museum of ArtA Woman Putting Flowers in Her HairOriginal explanation based on the sources above. Images carry their own reuse terms.