Rosalba Carriera per l’inaugurazione delle sale degli autoritratti nella R. Galleria degli Uffizi

Vittorio Malamani, 1899

Malamani, Vittorio. Rosalba Carriera per l’inaugurazione delle sale degli autoritratti nella R. Galleria degli Uffizi. Rome: Ministero dell’Istruzione Pubblica, 1899. First separate edition. Large 4to, 125 pp.; with illus. facsimile reproductions of Carriera’s letters and 9 plates, most reproducing engravings made after her paintings and pastels, some in color, bound together at rear, contents very good with occasional small marks, pages untrimmed; orig. paper wrpprs. present but separated with significant chipping at edges of both covers, spine lacking. Manuscript presentation inscription on half-title from the author to Riccardo Artoni(?). Together with 3 b/w prints of Carriera’s L’Innocenza (1705; a.k.a. La Giovinetta della Colomba) by Ed. Alinari. Carriera submitted L’Innocenza to the Accademia di San Luca and on the basis of its quality was the first woman admitted to Rome’s all-male academy.

This extract is seemingly the first major monographic work devoted to Rosalba Carriera (1675-1757), and the missing “first edition” to Vittorio Malamani’s later Carriera catalogue (Bergamo: Istituto Italiano d’Arti Grafiche Editore, 1910). Originally published in Le Gallerie nazionali italiane: notizie e documenti 4 (1896-1897), pp. 27-149, it is the first application of modern art historical methods to Carriera’s artwork and career.

On the occasion of the opening of the Uffizi’s new self-portrait gallery, Malamani set out to correct a problem that Carriera’s biographers still encounter: little is known of her early training and her established biography is dependent on both short sentimental elegies published decades after her death and transcriptions of her journals and letters heavily edited by friends, family, and prejudiced translators.

Rare. The 1899 first edition listed by OCLC at only two European institutions, all other holdings are the second edition.

$550