Pietro Longhi

A. Ravà, Pietro Longhi, Bergamo 1923, p. 31;
V. Moschini, Pietro Longhi, Venice 1956, p. 61(citing the 1753 letter);
T. Pignatti, Pietro Longhi, Venice 1968, p. 68, under letter no. 11, and p. 143 (as a lost work but with a reproduction of the Wagner print (fig. 490) and citing the 1753 letter);
T. Pignatti, L'opera completa di Pietro Longhi, Milan 1974, p. 93, no. 90,1 (the Wagner print reproduced).

ENGRAVED
By Wagner.

Pietro Longhi's style, notable for its elegance and humour, successfully blends a tradition of intimate genre derived from Giuseppe Maria Crespi in Bologna with the more rococo fantasy of French painters such as Watteau and Lancret.  For all their theatrical elegance and apparently contrived conception, his scenes of masked figures in Venetian settings such as ridotti are probably fairly accurate, since he was lauded in his own day as a great painter of reality.  Many of his genre pictures show masked figures, and as a result, we are tempted to see them as characteristic Venetian well-to-do persons, engaged in louche pursuits that epitomise the supposed decadence of their time and place, but in fact the wearing of masks were only permitted during certain festivals, particularly Carnival, which, admittedly, lasted longer than it does today: from 26th December to the beginning of Lent.

This picture is an important lost work by Longhi, which disappeared soon after it was painted, and is known in the literature only through early descriptions of it, and from Joseph Wagner's reproductive engraving of it (fig. 1).  It was mentioned in a letter written by the artist on the 12th January 1753 to his publisher Giambattista Remondini, when it was in the collection of Cecilia Ema Morosini in Venice: "ò ricevuto anco le dodezzi carte che due consegnerò a S.E.a la Sig.a Cecilia Ema Morosini che possiede l'originale della Botega da Caffè..." (the original manuscript is in the Museo Civico, Bassano, Ep. Remondini, XIII-25-3548).  Remondini was a printer and publisher in Bassano whom Longhi favoured for the high quality of his output and not merely on account of the presents of delicacies ("precioso vitello"... "vino da casata") and invitations to stay in the country that are the subject of some of their correspondence.  A letter written by Longhi to Remondini on 7th December 1748 refers to a first series of engravings printed by Remondini from plates engraved by Wagner (spelt phonetically by Longhi as Vagner), who was rapidly establishing himself as the foremost engraver and publisher in Venice.  The letter makes particular mention of the present subject which Longhi describes in detail: "io in tanto rosamente le dico qual sia stata la mia intenzione nel quadro: due dame alla Botega del Cafè alla Mira corteggiate da due Peregrini, uno in Parucca e l'altro Pantalon in capel de paglia e vesta da camera" (idem, XIII-25-3543).  This letter provides a likely terminus ante quem for the present painting.  Since the design was already described in December 1748 in terms of its reproduction in engraved form, it is likely that the painting dates from at least months, and quite possibly years, earlier.

Longhi later re-used the central figure group in a number of different pictures in different settings.  One such was offered in New York, Sotheby's, 28 May 1999, lot 189 (estimate $500,000-700,000), in which the figure to our left is almost identical, though showing more of her face.  That work bears an inscription referring to the election of Doge Franceso Loredan in 1752, providing a terminus post quem for it.