Portrait de Rosabianca Skira

With her porcelain-like skin, Rosabianca Skira stares hauntingly from the canvas in this portrait by Balthus, executed in 1949. There is a mixture of the wistful and the determined about her abstract gaze that is fitting in the woman who for many years controlled the publishing empire founded by Albert Skira. Balthus had met Rosabianca and her husband in the mid-1940s when the artist was living in Switzerland, in the Villa Diodati, where Lord Byron had resided and presided, Milton had stayed and Mary Shelley had been inspired to write Frankenstein. Balthus and the Skiras had struck up an immediate friendship, not least through their mutual interest in and love of art. Skira's success in publishing was almost completely due to his contacts in the art world, and his most successful publications were art related, be it in the form of books illustrated by artists such as Picasso and Matisse and sometimes printed in small and exclusive editions, or the books and monographs about artists. He had also been responsible for the publication of Minotaure, one of the most influential Surrealist periodicals whose list of contributors reads like a Who's Who of the avant-garde in the 1930s. Meanwhile, his wife Rosabianca was the daughter of the prominent art historian Lionello Venturi, as well as an author on artists and art history in her own right.

This art historical heritage is clear in Portrait de Rosabianca Skira. On the one hand, there is a deep sense of the Old Masters here. Rosabianca's hand extends to the painted frame, as in a portrait by Hans Memling, and even the texture of her skin has a quality of early Netherlandish portraiture. Meanwhile, the background has been painted in muted tones which somehow mimic fresco painting. This, combined with the muted, gentle light that illuminates the sitter's face, appears to refer to one of Balthus' main artistic heroes, Piero della Francesca. On the other hand, Rosabianca, who was already in her thirties by the time the picture was painted, has been lent the timeless air of youth on the cusp so central to many of Balthus' most famous paintings, making this a knowing reference to his own controversial oeuvre as well as a tribute to the sitter and in some way a reflection of her personality as perceived by the artist.

Balthus' personal interest in his friend is reflected in the manner with which he has allowed the majority of the picture to be executed with an evident and deliberate roughness. The brushwork of the hands and clothes have a slightly frantic feeling to them. However, this is mainly designed to contrast with the absorbing smoothness of the skin. Balthus controls the viewer, making sure that our gaze is drawn and retained by the face, and the expression, at the work's centre.