Self-Portrait as "Winter"

Rosalba Carriera's Self-Portrait as 'Winter', painted around 1730, belongs to a series of allegorical self-portraits representing the four seasons that she produced at the height of her fame. Such personification series — the artist depicting herself as Winter, Spring, Summer, and Autumn — combined the personal and the allegorical in a format popular in Baroque and Rococo portraiture. Carriera was by this date the most celebrated pastellist in Europe, having conquered Paris during her 1720 visit and received honours from the Académie Royale.

The artist presents herself in a fur-trimmed winter costume, the seasonal attribute communicated through dress and perhaps bare branches or snow rather than literal coldness. Carriera's characteristic soft pastel handling and her ability to render the textures of different fabrics — fur, lace, silk — are fully in evidence. The self-portrayal carries the relaxed confidence of an artist at the peak of her powers.