Giulia Lama

Contessa di Rosa, Venice;

Anonymous sale, London, Dreweatts, 27 May 2021, lot 81 (as after Giambattista Piazzetta);

Where acquired by the present owner.

U. Ruggeri, Novità per il Piazzetta e per la sua bottega, in 'Critica d'Arte', XLI, no. 145, 1976, pp. 32-34, reproduced fig. 2 (as Giulia Lama, location unknown);

U. Ruggeri, Giambattista Piazzetta. Il suo tempo, la sua scuola, exh. cat., Venice 1983, p. 120 (as Giulia Lama, location unknown).

Little is known about the Venetian painter Giulia Lama. She lived in Castello near Campo Santa Maria Formosa and remained close with her family – she never married and lived a mostly secluded life. Her father Agostino was an artist, a pupil of Pietro della Vecchia, and it is thought that she studied and worked with him until his death in 1714. Among her known works is a self-portrait from 1725, at the Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence.¹ This self-portrait, and many of the other thirty or so paintings ascribed to Lama, reveal the influence of Giambattista Piazzetta, with whom it is assumed she also trained. A portrait of Lama by Piazzetta, dated circa 1715–20, is at the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid.²

¹ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Giulia_Lama.jpg

² https://www.museothyssen.org/en/collection/artists/piazzetta-giambattista/portrait-giulia-lama