854 massimo favilla, ruggero rugolo, and dulcia meijers
even if it was related to a specific family.110 Pietro Longhi was practically
the only Venetian painter whom local painters kept for themselves, to
such an extent that one could even speak of a true native-Venetian taste.
the delight in humanity, the every-day, in the topical and the trivial
illustrate the new sensibility of the age. in this sense, Longhi’s paintings
ran parallel to the rise of the comedy, of memoirs, of gossip and of news-
papers, and the introduction of the so-called “conversation” pieces else-
where in europe. the playwright Gasparo Gozzi did not hesitate to equate
Pietro Longhi’s imitations of real life with tiepolo’s imagination.111 and
Goldoni, who broke away from the Commedia dell’Arte tradition, praised
the painter for being “verosimile,” or verosimilar, which can best be trans-
lated as having “the appearance of being real.” Longhi was admired exactly
for this quality: to the standards of his time, he was a “realistic” painter
because he depicted what he saw. in these visual testimonials of contem-
porary life, illusionist effect and allegorical allusions were eschewed and
the iconography of historical, biblical, or mythological nature was avoided;
even psychological depth was omitted (Fig. 22.13).
acclaimed as a figurative chronicler of the daily habits, customs, and
private entertainments of the Venetian nobility and middle class, we can
only guess how realistic and truthful these informal “portrayals” of Longhi
were. the 18th-century chronicler Pietro Gradenigo characterized Longhi
as a painter who excelled in “natural attitudes and caricatures that are
strikingly similar.”112 if we bear in mind that the italian word caricatura
refers to real-life people, then this quote implies that ridicule or some
sort of comical mock, however scant, must have formed an ingredient in
his work.113 Yet another aspect becomes apparent in alessandro’s biogra-
phy of his father. alessandro emphasized that his father had “a brilliant
and bizarre mind that specialized in painting civil pastimes and social
gatherings (riduzioni) interlaced with love games and jalousies so true to
110 Philip L. Sohm, Pietro Longhi, and Carlo Goldoni, “relations Between Painting and
theater,” Zeitschrift fur Kunstgeschichte 45 (1982), 256–73; rolf Bagemihl, “Pietro Longhi
and Venetian Life,” Metropolitan Museum Journal 23 (1988), 233–47; Dulcia Meijers, De
gouden schemer van Venetië. Een portret van de Venetiaanse adel in de achttiende eeuw (the
Hague, 1991), pp. 124–32; and Werner Busch, Das sentimentalische Bild. Die Krise der Kunst
im 18. Jahrhundert und die Geburt der Moderne (Munich, 1993), pp. 294–308.
111 in the Gazetta Veneta, No. 55, 13 Agosto 1760, mentioned by Haskell, Patrons and Pain
ters, p. 323.
112 Gradenigo 1760, published in Lina Livan, Notizie d’arte tratte dai notatori e dagli
annali del N.H. Pietro Gradenigo (Venice, 1942), p. 62.
113 Definitely not comparable to the biting satire of his english contemporary
Hogarth.