Earth (The Four Elements)

Rosalba Carriera was nearly 70 when she made this set of the four elements, between 1741 and 1743, and it belongs to the last stretch of her working life. Her output had been falling since the death of her sister Giovanna in 1737. By 1746, according to the French collector and connoisseur Pierre-Jean Mariette, her sight had gone, and in May 1749 she decided to have her cataracts operated on. The operation brought only brief relief before she went completely blind. Earth shows a bunch of grapes, which, the museum notes, makes her look very like an allegory of Autumn, and she wears a garland of flowers.