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Shown from the chest up, a young woman with smooth, pale skin sleeps with her head tipped away from us in this vertical painting. Her face leans to our left so we see her delicate features in profile. She has faint brows, and her pink lips are parted. The tip of her nose and cheeks are also lightly flushed. Her brown curls are topped with a black fur cap, which is draped with a triangular, muted red cloth. The cloth comes to a point with a gold tassel, which hangs alongside her neck. A flaring, pleated, white collar encircles her neck, seeming unconnected to her other garments. Her topaz-blue bodice is open to show a butter-yellow corset beneath. The jacket is lined with cool, shimmering green. Her head tips alongside the arched, wooden back of her chair, which is upholstered with caramel brown edged with gold. The background is washed with tones of olive and dark green. The painting is created with blended strokes, giving it a soft, almost blurry appearance.
Read the visual description

Shown from the chest up, a young woman with smooth, pale skin sleeps with her head tipped away from us in this vertical painting. Her face leans to our left so we see her delicate features in profile. She has faint brows, and her pink lips are parted. The tip of her nose and cheeks are also lightly flushed. Her brown curls are topped with a black fur cap, which is draped with a triangular, muted red cloth. The cloth comes to a point with a gold tassel, which hangs alongside her neck. A flaring, pleated, white collar encircles her neck, seeming unconnected to her other garments. Her topaz-blue bodice is open to show a butter-yellow corset beneath. The jacket is lined with cool, shimmering green. Her head tips alongside the arched, wooden back of her chair, which is upholstered with caramel brown edged with gold. The background is washed with tones of olive and dark green. The painting is created with blended strokes, giving it a soft, almost blurry appearance.

National Gallery of Art · Painting

A Sleeping Girl

Pietro Rotari

Date
1760/1762
Medium
oil on canvas
Dimensions
overall: 45.4 x 35.3 cm (17 7/8 x 13 7/8 in.)
Classification
Painting
Accession number
1939.1.107
Credit line
Samuel H. Kress Collection
Time span
1751 to 1775
Department
CIS-B
Original NGA record Wikidata

Subjects and terms

  • painted surface
  • Baroque
  • amusement
  • genre
  • Venetian
  • Sleeping
  • Italian Paintings of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
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/99.

NGA object ID 248. Collection metadata is reproduced under CC0. This work is included because its NGA published-image record is marked open access; visitors should recheck the source record before substantial reuse.