Air (The Four Elements)

In the 1700s sets of four personifications were a favourite format: the four continents, the four seasons, the four elements. This is Air, from a set of the elements that Rosalba Carriera finished between 1741 and 1743 for Giovanni Francesco Stoppani, a Milanese churchman who was then papal nuncio in Venice, the pope's ambassador to the Republic, and who later became a cardinal.

Each of the four is cut like a portrait, the young woman's face seen very close. The object that identifies her element is pushed to the edge of the sheet, and in three of them it sits at the lower right. Air is the exception. She wears a cloak of deep blue, only a flap of it showing, and holds a small bird on a thread.