Young Lady of the Le Blond Family

This young woman belonged to the family of Le Blond, the French consul in Venice, whose relatives Rosalba Carriera drew again and again through the 1720s and into the 1730s. Whole households sat for her that way, parents and children turned into a matching set of pastels a family could hang together, and several of the Le Blond portraits are still side by side at the Accademia. She worked fast and to order, and a face like this, fresh and lightly powdered, was exactly what a client wanted to keep of a daughter or a niece. Rosalba kept a working diary that tracks these commissions by name and date. It even records the day in May 1725 when she began the portrait of the consul's daughter.