Pietro Longhi

Bio

The principal diarist of Settecento Venice’s daily life and mores, Pietro Longhi studied with his father, Alessandro, and then until the end of 1719 was a pupil of Antonio Balestra before travelling to Bologna. There he spent several years in the studio of G.M. Crespi, in whose style, combined with that of Balestra and A.Longhi, he continued to work well into the 1730s. Under the impact of the work of French painters such as Watteau, Lancret and Mercier, Pietro Longhi made a dramatic shift in emphasis during the 1730s to his famous genre style, initiating it with small pastoral scenes showing shepherds and shepherdesses (Bassano, Museo Civico, and Rovigo, Museo del Seminario).

Longhi’s main activity was concentrated in the period between 1740-70, and the direction his art was to take was already indicated by The Young Lady at her Toilet of 1741 (Venice, Academia) or The Presentation (Paris, Louvre). In these, Longhi manifested the interest in costume and behaviour which distinguishes his work, and which is enriched after 1750 by a move away from exclusively elegant subjects; in 1751 he painted one of his most realistic and moving pictures, The Rhinoceros (Venice, Ca’ Rezzonico) and open-air scenes filled with the atmosphere of the Lagoons, such as Duck Shooting (Venice, Querini Stampalia). The same museum has his Seven Sacraments, of the mid-1740s, which still show an indebtedness to Crespi. His few portraits reveal a charming talent in this field – as in The Portrait of Benedetto Ganassoni of 1774 (Venice, Ca’ Rezzonico) and the large Pisani Family of the early 1760s (Venice, Private Collection).