A Girl with a Flower in Her Hair
1760/1762
Painter, Venetian, 1707 - 1762

Artwork overview
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Medium
oil on canvas
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Credit Line
-
Dimensions
overall: 45.8 x 35.4 cm (18 1/16 x 13 15/16 in.)
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Accession
1939.1.108
Artwork history & notes
Provenance
Said to have been given by Empress Catherine II of Russia [1729-1796] to Prince Aleksandr Andreyevich Bezborodko [1747-1799], her secretary of petitions and later imperial chancellor; given by him to Prince Viktor Pavlovich Kochubei [1768-1834], Russian diplomat and statesman.[1] (Count Alessandro Contini Bonacossi, Rome); purchased July 1932 by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York;[2] gift 1939 to NGA.
[1] In notations in the Samuel H. Kress Foundation records, NGA curatorial files. These come from the bill of sale (see note 2), which reads "Two Portraits of Young Girls...By Count Pietro Rotari...From the Royal Palace of Catherine of Russia...Were given as a present to Prince Besborodko, Chancellor of State, from whom they went to The Collection of Prince Kociubey, Hetman of Ucraine."
[2] The date of purchase is often given as 1939, which is, however, the date the painting entered the National Gallery. The bill of sale for several paintings, a book of drawings, a sculpture, two vases, and a velvet cope is dated 29 July 1932 (copy in NGA curatorial records). Roberto Longhi's expert opinion on the back of a Kress photograph (NGA curatorial files) is dated November 1932, and Alfred M. Frankfurter. "Eighteenth Century Venice in a New York Collection," The Fine Arts 19 (December 1932): 10, repro. 7, documents the painting in the Kress Collection by December of that year. See also The Kress Collection Digital Archive, https://kress.nga.gov/Detail/objects/46.
Associated Names
Bibliography
1932
Frankfurter, Alfred M. "Eighteenth Century Venice in a New York Collection." The Fine Arts 19 (December 1932): 10, repro. 7.
1941
Preliminary Catalogue of Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1941: 174, no. 219.
1942
Book of Illustrations. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1942: 243, repro. 181.
1959
Paintings and Sculpture from the Samuel H. Kress Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1959: 240, repro.
1965
Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 117.
1968
National Gallery of Art. European Paintings and Sculpture, Illustrations. Washington, 1968: 104, repro.
1969
Nikolenko, Lada. "Pietro Rotari in Russia and America." The Connoisseur 171 (July 1969): 195, fig. 1.
1972
Fredericksen, Burton B., and Federico Zeri. Census of Pre-Nineteenth Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections. Cambridge, Mass., 1972: 179.
1973
Shapley, Fern Rusk. Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: Italian Schools, XVI-XVIII Century. London, 1973: 157, fig. 299.
1975
European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1975: 310, repro.
1979
Shapley, Fern Rusk. Catalogue of the Italian Paintings. 2 vols. Washington, 1979: 1:412; 2:pl. 292.
1985
European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 356, repro.
1996
De Grazia, Diane, and Eric Garberson, with Edgar Peters Bowron, Peter M. Lukehart, and Mitchell Merling. Italian Paintings of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 1996: 244-248, color repro. 247.
2012
Percival, Melissa. Fragonard and the Fantasy Figure: Painting the Imagination. Burlington, Vt., 2012: xii, 150, fig. 4.19.
Wikidata ID
Q20178188