Pietro Longhi

Pietro Longhi painted everyday life in 18th century Venice: music lessons, family gatherings, visits to the dressmaker, card players and masked figures at carnival. His pictures are small and intimate, with doll like figures in quiet interiors, and they give a gentle, often slightly comic view of Venetian society.

Born in Venice, he trained with Antonio Balestra and then in Bologna with Giuseppe Maria Crespi, a painter of genre scenes. He found his true subject in the 1740s and became the chronicler of Venetian domestic life, often compared to Hogarth. His best known picture, The Rhinoceros (1751), shows Venetians gathered to see the famous rhinoceros Clara. Many of his works are in the Ca’ Rezzonico in Venice, with others in the National Gallery in London and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

In The Music Lesson and Patrician Family, notice the masks, costumes and small everyday details.