Is Angela Oberer? No, she is Over Here!

On Saturday, April 16, I went to the Art History Symposium in Mariposa 1000. The lecture I listened to was by Angela Oberer, who was from Florence, Italy. She focused on Venetian art, specifically artwork done by well-known female artist, Rosalba Carriera. Unfortunately, I was only able to stay for the first half hour of her lecture, but I did get some interesting information out of it:

Rosalba earned a milestone in her career with pastel painting and did not need a patron/benefactor for her work. Because she was a woman painter, Rosalba became a curiosity for others, and was considered a heresy due to the fact that she did not want to get married nor was she interested in doing so. She behaved in a matriarchal manner, and was the first born child in her family. She took her mother's name, and cared/took control for her family after her father died. She believed that there was no time for men, which is why she chose to remain unmarried. Rosalba was a busy, inflexible old woman, which is the reason why she was described as a spinster. Although it was her choice to keep her position in her family (she did not want to leave her mom), many thought it was because of her appearance: she was not as pretty, which was why she did not marry. 

There was a person that Angela quoted about Rosalba that went something along the lines of: "women protected by ugliness is drawn away from love" 

What I learned about this lecture during the time before I left early, was that Rosalba Carriera seems to be a very independent woman, and shows the fact that she does not need a man to keep her happy.

Overall, the lecture was very interesting and there were a couple of times where art history humor was being said.

One of the works Carriera helped with