Self-portrait

Rosalba Carriera made this likeness of herself around 1746, when she was past 70 and her eyesight had begun to fail. Look closely and the two eyes do not quite match. That is not a slip of the chalk, it is what she set down honestly, the weakness that within a few years would leave her blind and unable to paint. She had spent a career smoothing other faces into powdered, youthful calm, and she grants herself none of that here, only dark fur and a direct, guarded look. She had portrayed herself many times before, once as an allegory of Winter with white fur held to her cheek. Here the fur is back, wrapped around her own aging face with no allegory to soften it.