The Singer Faustina Bordoni with a Musical Score

Faustina Bordoni was the most celebrated female opera singer in Europe during the 1720s and 1730s, famed for her roles in Handelian opera and later in operas composed by her husband Johann Adolf Hasse. Her 1724 pastel portrait by Rosalba Carriera, holding a musical score, is one of several images made of her by leading artists of the period — a reflection of her extraordinary celebrity and the convergence of musical and visual art worlds in early eighteenth-century Venice and Dresden. The musical score she holds is a deliberate attribute, identifying her profession and distinguishing this from a generic female portrait. Dresden's Gemäldegalerie held both this and other Bordoni-related works, reflecting the city's position as one of Europe's premier opera capitals under Hasse's direction. The portrait documents the intersection of operatic and painterly celebrity in the Rococo era.

Carriera's characterisation of Bordoni emphasises the singer's vivid expressiveness — the eyes and set of the mouth carry the energy expected of a performer — while the musical score is rendered with enough detail to be read as notation without competing with the sitter's face. The costume reflects the fashionable dress of a celebrated public figure.