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Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
Giambattista Piazzetta

Portrait of Giulia Lama

ca. 1715 - 1720
Oil on canvas.
69.4 x 55.5 cm
Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
Inv. no.
316
(
1966.11
)
ROOM 18
Level 2
Permanent Collection
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 14 13 15 16 17 18 22 19 20 21 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 Recommended start of the visitClassical rooms
1 14th Century. Early Italian Painting 2 15th Century. German and Spanish Painting 3 15th Century. Early Netherlandish Painting 4 15th Century. Italian Painting 5 15th and 16th Centuries. Renaissance Portraiture 6 16th Century. Villahermosa Gallery 7 16th Century. Italian Painting 8 15th and 16th Centuries. German Painting 9 15th and 16th Centuries. German Painting 10 16th Century. Netherlandish Painting 11 Tiziano, Tintoretto, Bassano and  El Greco 12 17th Century. Caravaggio and Baroque Painting 13 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 14 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 15 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 16 18th Century. Italian Painting 17 18th Century. Italian Painting 18 18th Century. Italian Painting 19 Classical rooms 20 Classical rooms 21 Classical rooms 22 18th Century. Italian Painting 23 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 24 18th Century. French and English Painting 25 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Scenes of Daily Life and Interiors 26 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 27 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Portrait 28 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 29 19th Century. European Painting. Goya and Romanticism  

Giambattista Piazzetta played a key role in the renewal of Venetian painting of the Settecento. While Sebastiano Ricci and Giambattista Tiepolo were responsible for the revival of the Venetian approach to colour through their rich and highly imaginative compositions, Piazzetta was part of the new trend that revived genre painting in the mid-18th century.

The present canvas, published by Fiocco in 1927, is dated to the start of the artist’s mature period in which he revealed his talents as a portraitist as well as the influence of his teacher Antonio Molinari. Piazzetta originally used an oval format that was modified at an unknown date. Both the placement of the figure and the lines of an oval (just visible at the four corners) confirm this original format. The image is constructed through the use of a pronounced chiaroscuro typical of this period of Piazzetta’s work in which light played an important role, inspired by the work of the Venetian tenebrists of the late 17th century.

The identity of the sitter is known through the similarity of her features to those found in a Self-portrait by Giulia Lama in the Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence, dated 1725. Lama, a Venetian artist born in 1681, moved in the city’s artistic circles from a young age. A student of Piazzetta, her earliest works deploy the strong contrasts of light typical of his work, although these would later be softened in line with the Venetian style of Giambattista Tiepolo and with Piazzetta’s later style. Giulia Lama died on 7 October 1747.

The present painting was recorded in two Viennese collections, that of Eugen Miller von Aichholz and the Planiscig collection. From Austria it passed to the collection of Clive Pascall in the UK where Pallucchini recorded it in his monograph on Piazzetta published in 1956. By 1966 the painting was in the Thyssen-Bornemisza collection in Switzerland, having been acquired on the UK art market that year.

Piazzetta depicts Giulia Lama with soft features, enveloped in a dreamy, melancholy atmosphere characteristic of his style and also evident on occasions in his genre paintings. If compared with the Self-portrait mentioned above, Piazzetta’s depiction of Lama is an idealised one.

Piazzetta constructed the face from a warm range of grey-brown and reddish tones that are typical of his style and which contrast with the luminous whites used to define the neck of the sitter’s blouse. Her pose, turning towards the viewer with her palette and brushes in her hand, produces the sensation that she has momentarily stopped in her work. Mariuz drew attention to the way in which the large, swollen eyes are constructed, created from pronounced contrasts of juxtaposed light and shade. He related this to the face of the Virgin in the Sagredo Altarpiece in the Detroit Institute of Arts by Piazzetta. If we compare the present sensual canvas by Piazzetta with Lama’s Self-portrait in the Uffizi, in which she is also seen holding brushes and palette, her rather bulging, heavy eyes are also evident, particularly the eyelids. Also striking in the Self-portrait is the long, broad nose, which is less delicate than in the present canvas, and the heavily defined, thick lips and long mouth that are very different to the ones seen here. According to Jones, Giulia Lama posed for Piazzetta as Susannah in Susannah and the Elders, now in the Uffizi.

Mar Borobia

18th Century18th Century - Italian paintingPaintingOilcanvas
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More details about Portrait of Giulia Lama

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Vídeo
Género e iconografías de las mujeres en la Colección Thyssen-Bornemisza por Ana Moreno

Conferencia de Ana Moreno, Jefa del Área de Educación de Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, dentro del curso "Iconografía y lectura de imágenes en la Colección Thyssen-Bornemisza".

Related exhibitions

Antonio Canova Antonio Canova
Temporary Exhibition
The Triumph of Venus. The Image of Woman in 18th Century Venetian Painting
From 19 November 1997 to 22 February 1998

Products and publications

Portrait of Giulia Lama

Portrait of Giulia Lama

17.00 €

César Paternosto. Towards painting as object. Exhibition Catalogue

César Paternosto. Towards painting as object. Exhibition Catalogue

9.50 €

Catalog Walid Raad: Cotton Under My Feet (English)

Catalog Walid Raad: Cotton Under My Feet (English)

25.00 € 23.75 €

Los impresionistas y la fotografía. Exhibition catalogue. Spanish Hard Cover

Los impresionistas y la fotografía. Exhibition catalogue. Spanish Hard Cover

38.00 € 25.00 €

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Portrait of Giulia Lama. Retrato de Giulia Lama, c. 1715-1720
Portrait of Giulia Lama
Giambattista Piazzetta

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Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

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Portrait of Giulia Lama. Retrato de Giulia Lama, c. 1715-1720
Portrait of Giulia Lama
Giambattista Piazzetta

©

Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

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