It is singular that Longhi should have reached the age of thirty-two
without discovering his real vocation. The absence of brain-force in the
conception, of strength in the design, and of any effective adaptation
to architecture, which damns the Sagredo frescoes, is enough to prove
that he was here engaged on work for which he had no faculty and felt no
sympathy.
What revealed to him the true bias of his talent? Did he perchance,
just about this period, come across some prints from Hogarth? That is
very possible. But the records of his life are so hopelessly meagre that
it were useless to indulge in conjecture.
I am not aware whether he had already essayed any of those domestic
pieces and delineative scenes from social life which displayed his
genuine artistic power, and for the sake of which his name will always
be appreciated. He is said to have been of a gay, capricious
temperament, delighting in the superficial aspects of aristocratic
society, savouring the humours of the common folk with no less pleasure,
and enjoying all phases of that easy-going Carnival gaiety in which the
various classes met and mingled at Venice. These inclinations directed
him at last into the right path. For some forty years he continued to
paint a series of easel-pictures, none of them very large, some of them
quite small, in which the Vanity Fair of Venice at his epoch was
represented with fidelity and kindly feeling.
The panels attributed to Pietro Longhi are innumerable. They may be
found scattered through public galleries and private collections,
adorning the walls of patrician palaces, or thrust away in corners of
country-houses. He worked carefully, polished the surface of his
pictures to the finish of a miniature, set them in frames of a fixed
pattern, and covered them with glass. These genre-pictures, while
presenting notes of similarity, differ very considerably in their
technical handling and their scheme of colour. Our first inference,
after inspecting a miscellaneous selection, is that Longhi must have
started a school of imitators. Indeed this is probably the case; and it
is certain that some pieces ascribed to his brush are the production of
his son Alessandro, who was born in 1733. Yet closer study of authentic
paintings by Pietro's hand compels the critic to be cautious before he
rejects, on internal evidence of style, a single piece assigned by good
tradition to this artist. The Museo Civico at Venice, for example,
contains a large number of Longhis, some of which seem to fall below his
usual standard. I have, however, discovered elaborate drawings for these
doubtful pictures in the book of his original sketches, which is also
preserved there. Longhi must therefore have painted the pictures
himself, or must have left the execution of his designs to a pupil.
Again, the style of his two masterpieces (the _Sala del Ridotto_ and the
_Parlatorio d'un Convento_, both in the Museo Civico) differs in
important particulars from that of the elaborately finished little
panels by which he is most widely known. These fine compositions are
marked by a freer breadth of handling, a sketchy boldness, a combined
richness and subtlety of colouring, and an animation of figures in
movement, which are not common in the average of his genre-pieces. When
I come to speak of the family portrait of the Pisani, signed by his
name, I shall have to point out that the style of execution, the scheme
of colour, and the pictorial feeling of this large composition belong to
a manner dissimilar from either of those which I have already indicated
as belonging to authentic Longhis.