With all his limitations of character and artistic scope, Longi remains
a very interesting and highly respectable painter. In an age of social
corruption he remained free from impurity, and depicted only what was
blameless and of good repute. We cannot study his work without surmising
that manners in Italy were more refined than in our own country at that
epoch--a conclusion to which we are also led by Goldoni's, Carlo
Gozzi's, and even Casanova's Memoirs. Morally licentious and politically
decadent the Venetians undoubtedly were; but they were neither brutal,
nor cruel, nor savage, nor sottish. Even the less admirable aspects of
their social life--its wasteful luxury and effeminate indulgence in
pleasure--have been treated with so much reserve by this humane artist,
that youth and innocence can suffer no contamination from the study of
his works. At the same time they are delightful for their gracious
realism, for their naive touch upon the follies of the period. Those who
love to dream themselves back into the days of hoops and perukes--and
there are many such among as now--should not neglect to make themselves
acquainted with Pietro Longhi.