The Reception before a Wedding

(Pietro Longhi)

The painting is a pendant to Peasants dancing La Furlana, which is monogrammed P. L. lower right. Fabrizio Magani has confirmed the autography of both paintings.[1]

Pietro Guarienti’s 1753 addendum to his Abecedario Pittorico del M. R. P. Pellegrino Antonio Orlandi [2] comments upon Longhi’s unique qualities as the premier painter of Italian Settecento genre scenes: ‘Figures and places can be immediately recognised at a single glance’. This precious insight underlines how contemporaries viewed Longhi’s ability to observe real events marking a gradual abandonment of his youthful practice for creating tableau or story paintings. Longhi’s attention to the details of what might be defined as ‘family portraits in a domestic interior’ is absolutely without precedent in the Veneto.

The Anglo-French fashion for intimate family portraits was brought back to Venice by Jacopo Amigoni who returned from Paris with both the engraver Joseph Wagner, as well as Charles Joseph Flipart who had occasion to meet Longhi. Encountering countesses and their husbands in the patrician palaces bordering the canal, Longhi would assemble them with their children, in-laws and servants into heterogeneous groups, frequently placed in some corner of the palace where, lit by a beam of light which separated them from a penombrous background, he could highlight their features and concentrate on rendering the voluptuous fabrics faithfully.

The exhibited painting has all the hallmarks of an instantaneous ‘snapshot’ of an aristocratic family group. It is, however, more than just a casual assembly: the young woman at the centre of the composition wears a sumptuous dress for a special occasion and she is intent in displaying it to her guests. She is caught frozen in an attitude of quasi embarrassment at showing off in this way, bedecked with all her ornaments, an intricate hairstyle, flowers at her bosom and the detail of the pocket watch at her waist which shows the time of eleven o’clock. Another young woman fastens a necklace round her neck and it is this particular detail which helps us to identify the scene. The scene records, in fact, the few moments just before the benediction of Holy Matrimony. Venetian custom has it that the bride’s mother traditionally gives her a pearl necklace which has to be worn for a whole year after the wedding. It was normal for this gift to be witnessed by numerous guests, as can be seen in the present scene. The father, in the right background, gestures to the footman to serve the drinks. An elderly governess, standing behind and to the right of the bride, holds up the bridal train of white silk. The figure immediately to the left of the bride may well be the groom, who has just risen from the chair, and, tenderly gazing on his intended, points to himself with his right hand. In the foreground an older woman who coyly gazes outwards towards the onlooker is probably the future mother-in-law. Her husband, standing behind her pushes a young nephew to the forefront, while two figures in the background shadows pass comment to each other on the scene they are witnessing. The scene is completed on the right side by the serving girl bearing a tray upon which is displayed the bridal bouquet. Yet Longhi’s own powers of observation, so acute in their attention to intricate detail, are further emphasised in this scene, for the man standing at the extreme back just to the right of the bride, highlighted by a beam of light, is probably none other than the artist himself judging by his close resemblance with other known self portraits.[3] Longhi appears here, in our wedding scene, ready to observe the minutiae of the arrangements in just the same way that he also appears in the painting The Elephant (Vicenza, Banco Ambrosiano Veneto) sketching (See Fig. 2 detail), or in the family gathering around the coffee pot, Coffee Time (Pasadena, Norton Simon Museum of Art).

Longhi affectionately annotates details of the daily life of his aristocratic patrons. He observes them in The Geography Lesson (Padua, Museo Civico) where the venetian, Francesco Algarotti’s ideas on the widening of scientific knowledge, expounded in his Newtonianismo per le dame,[4] are tempered by a drawing-room atmosphere, or in the Dance Lesson (Venice, Accademia), or The Music Lesson (San Francisco Museums). Longhi’s friendly relationship with his aristocratic patrons extends across the entire venetian establishment – the Sagredo, the Grimanis, the Pisani, the Barbarigos, the Mocenigos – all are recorded in the intricacies of their relationships, rapport, household events and of course their family unions. Consequently it is possible to hypothesise regarding the identity of the protagonists in our Reception before the Wedding since the bride would appear to be the selfsame figure, this time in a new domestic interior, depicted in a painting known as The Visit from a Friar which though now in the Ca’ Rezzonico, was once in the Grimani Collection (See Fig.3). The subject of our painting may well be the patrician Zuanne Grimani who married on 27 April 1750 Caterina Contarini in S. Trovaso.[5] Even the serving girl who brings the posy in our picture bears a distinct similarity to the girl who serves the ring-shaped buns in the Ca’ Rezzonico painting.[6] It seems probable that our picture was commissioned from Longhi by Zuanne Grimani’s mother, Loredana Doudo, in order to mark the event of her son’s union. Loredana’s coy look, with her fan touching her chin, as if to attract attention to herself or to indicate her husband, Zuan Antonio Grimani, who was then forty years old, indicates her special importance in this composition.

Longhi misses nothing: in our picture tracing the outlines of the differing personalities, he notes the characteristics of the variety of brocades and silks, the lace trimmings, the decorations of a typical venetian palace right down to the detail of the mirror or picture hanging on the wall behind the group of figures. This includes a female figure holding a circle, the symbol of eternity – nothing could be more appropriate for the wedding ceremony about to be celebrated. The artist shows his mastery in the rapid brushy technique with which he endows his forms and materials – he is at the height of his career at a time when he takes evident delight in characterising the individual personalities. This is a far cry from the rather stereotyped productions of his later period so that a dating in the 1750s seems appropriate for our picture – maybe even to 1750, the year of the marriage. This accords well with other works dating from this time such as The Visit from a Friar or the Ca’ Rezzonico Furlana which may also be dated c. 1750 and which also shares similar chromatic values and brushwork with our picture. The painting may also be compared to the series of The Sacraments (Venice, Fondazione Querini Stampalia) dateable between 1755 and 1757, and which also, coincidentally, include a marriage scene, though this time religious rather than domestic in content.

NOTES

[1] We are grateful to Fabrizio Magani for having provided all the information for this catalogue entry and for Peasants dancing La Furlana.

[2] P.Guarienti, ‘Pietro Longhi’, in P.A..Orlandi, Abecedario Pittorico del M.R.P. Pellegrino Antonio Orlandi Bolognese contenente le notizie de’ Professori….Venice, 1753.

[3] Cf. Alessandro Longhi’s portrait engraving of Pietro (see Fig. 1) which illustrates the Compendio delle Vite de’ Pittori Veneziani…(1762).

[4] F.Algarotti, Il Newtonianismo per le dame….Naples (but effectively printed in Venice), 1737.

[5] Cf. F. Pedrocco, Pietro Longi, ibid., Milan, 1993, p. 180.

[6] Cf. L. Moretti, ‘Asterische longhiani’, in Pietro Longhi, exh. cat., Milan, 1993, p. 251. This wedding was also mentioned in Carlo Goldoni’s Componimenti poetici.

PROVENANCE: Jack and Belle Linsky, New York.

EXHIBITED: New York, Finch College Museum of Art, Venetian Paintings of the 18th Century, 31 Oct.-16 Dec., 1961, no. 24.
Matthiesen Gallery, London, ‘The Settecento’, 1999