venetian art, 1600–1797 853
Upon his return to Venice, Longhi had first produced pastoral and reli-
gious scenes, but he had to compete in this with Piazzetta and his school.
Beginning in the late thirties, he cleverly specialized in the type of paint-
ing from which he would derive his fame: the interior.109
it is not always obvious, when we see a family depicted in Longhi’s
small- or medium-scale canvases, whether we are dealing with a painting
that can be simply labeled as a portrait. For instance, the scene show-
ing a man clad in a bright orange-red coat holding a little boy elegantly
by the hand while bystanders watch (property of the Banca ambrosiana
in Vicenza) has an ambiguous character. On the back wall of the room,
a portrait of a doge dominates, with a clearly legible text that identifies
him as the well-known 16th-century Sebastiano Venier. Hence, one could
assume that it is simply a portrait of the family Venier. But if so, then
the painter would have immortalized the family in a very unusual and
unconventional way, and at a highly unexpected moment in the middle
of an action. in many other works, an indirect allusion to a specific family
has been left out. We see how a household enjoys a cup of coffee or hot
chocolate, or we seem to witness a dance lesson or a tailor’s visit, a lady
at her toilet, or a girl tickling a young man while asleep, rendered almost
like snapshots. the sitters appear to be amusingly aware of being looked
at. if the painting always hung in the same palazzo, one can deduce that
it is likely representing the family that owned the palace, as is the case
with Longhi’s painting for Palazzo albrizzi. Upon verification, the family
of Giovanni Battista albrizzi counted indeed five children at that time.
Most of the sitters in this kind of depiction do not show particular or
clear individual traits. Stiff in their poses, they all too often seem doll-like,
for which reason Pietro Longhi at times has been considered a mediocre
painter. When we look at his individual portraits, however, we see how
the artist is absolutely capable of clever characterizations and convincing
resemblances. the question suggests itself whether Longhi deliberately
avoided emphasis on likeness. He preferably wanted to portray the domes-
tic doings of an aristocratic family, so that patricians, as it were, looked
at images of their own private life, which well explains their popularity.
in principle, any Venetian patrician family could identify with the scene
109 terisio Pignatti, Pietro Longhi (Milan, 1968); Pignatti, L’opera completa di Pietro
Longhi (Milan, 1974); exh. cat. (Venice, 1993), Pietro Longhi, ed. adriano Mariuz, Giuseppe
Pavanello, and Giandomenico romanelli (Milan, 1993); exh. cat. (Venice, 1995), Pietro
Longhi, Gabriel Bella: scene di vita veneziana, ed. Giorgio Busetto (Milan, 1995).