Frick Curator Reattributes Artwork Left for Decades in Storage as Rare Rosalba Carriera Portrait

A 200-year-old painting left for decades in storage at Tatton Park, a historic estate in Cheshire, U.K., has been identified as the work of preeminent Venetian pastelist Rosalba Carriera.

The examination was spearheaded by Xavier Salomon, deputy director and chief curator of the Frick Collection in New York. Salomon told Artnet News that he had become interested in the painter after the museum was gifted two of her paintings in 2020. Tatton Park was one of five estates in the U.K. he visited on an expedition to learn more about Carriera—or, as luck would have it, discover a work truly authored by Carriera, rather than a copy. 

According to the National Trust’s inventory, Tatton Park had owned the work, since identified as Carriera’s Portrait of a Tyrolese Lady, since the 18th century. The painting was likely purchased by Tatton Park by Samuel Hill, who bequeathed his estate to his nephew Samuel Egerton, the lord of Tatton Park, in 1758. Maurice Egerton, the fourth and last Lord Egerton of Tatton, left work to the National Trust when he died without an heir in 1958.

“The picture has been in our picture store since the mid 1980s and was thought to be a copy of a Carriera work rather than by her,” Carolyn Latham, the estate’s mansion and collections manager, said in a interview with the wire service Zenger.

Fortune was on the Frick’s side: When conservator Richard Hawkes unframed the painting for Salomon, removing it from its backing, a delicate Santini prayer card was discovered tucked within.

“When Rosalba prepared her work for export, she would hide a Santini prayer [card] tucked into the back of frames, for blessings for a safe passage,” estate collections manager Vicky Rowbotham told the BBC. “Over time, these fragile bits of paper often became lost or separated from her works. The discovery of one still in situ at Tatton was a real find.”

Salomon has examined some 200 works by Rosalba but said that only one out of ten contained a card, making each such discovery “hugely exciting.”

 “It just means that she was most likely the last person who touched it, who put it there,” he said. 

After a lengthy conservation, the reattributed portrait was put on view at the museum, where it will remain through October 29.