Jenny Saville: Rosetta II

This poster featuring Rosetta II (2005–06) was produced in 2021 on the occasion of a multi-venue exhibition heldacross five museums in Florence—Museo Novecento, Museo di Palazzo Vecchio, Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, Museo degli Innocenti, and Museo di Casa Buonarroti—that placed Jenny Saville’s work in dialogue with masterworks of the Italian Renaissance.

Rosetta II is an oil painting on watercolor paper, mounted on board. Saville has described this striking large-scale portrait of a blind woman as a mystic in ecstatic concentration, which she produced while based in Naples, Italy, as “the first beautiful picture I made.” The fruit of a remarkable bond of trust and spiritual communion between painter and subject, it also reveals a dynamic, sensory approach to gesture and composition, color and texture.