* Pietro Longhi Venice 1701- 1785

General Charles Fox;
By whom sold, London, Christie’s, London, November 27, 1875, lot 153;
F. Vigou Esq.;
Laurence Currie Esq.;
Viscount Rothemere, 1932;
By whom sold, London, Christie's, December 19, 1941, lot 84;
With Koetser Gallery, New York, from whom acquired by the third husband of the grandmother of the present owner in 1943.

The scene takes place in the salone centrale of a ridotto in Venice, identified by Pignatti as that of Ca’ Giustinian but which more likely shows that of Palazzo Dandolo at San Moisè, before Bernardino Maccaruzzi’s remodelling (completed in 1768). The ridotti were public spaces, usually located close to theaters, where the wealthy upper classes would mingle with the populace and engage in the principal activity of these locations - gambling. Since most visitors wore masks at the ridotto, it became the obvious location for conspiratorial plots and illicit amorous encounters, thus fuelling the imagination of artists in 18^th-century Venice: Longhi, Guardi and Tiepolo all painted numerous scenes of the ridotti and Casanova and Goldoni’s writings were both appreciated and inspired by these surroundings. For reasons of conspiracy the twenty ridotti scattered throughout Venice were closed on the orders of the Doge, through a decree of 1774 by the Maggior Consiglio, though they were reopened shortly thereafter as state-run casinos to be administered by the Serenissima.

Though not known to Pignatti when he wrote his monograph in 1968, this painting is an important example of the genre in which Longhi excelled. It is the best version of a composition known in at least four other variants, all published by Pignatti under “attributed works” and none of which has been universally accepted as autograph. The best of these is that from the collection of the Grandukes of Bavaria in Baden-Salem (for which see T. Pignatti, L’opera completa di Pietro Longhi, Milan 1974, p. 107, cat. no. 306, reproduced p. 108, fig. 306). Of the other three variants one is in the Fine Arts Gallery, San Diego, a second was formerly with Newhouse Galleries, New York (Pignatti, op. cit., p. 107, cat. no. 308, both reproduced p. 108, figs. 308 and 3081), and the third, a version put forward as autograph by Pignatti but now generally considered to be studio, was in the Salom collection at Segromigno Monte (Venice) and is now in the collection of the Banca Ambrosiana Veneta, Vicenza (V. Moschini, Pietro Longhi, Milan 1956, reproduced fig. 141). The composition was engraved by Pietro’s son Alessandro around 1760 (or shortly afterwards) and was accompanied by a moralizing inscription warning against the dangers of gambling: “Chi cerca, chi passeggia e chi desidera/ Chi dorme, e chi si scalda senza fuoco,/ Chi crede di arricchirsi, e non considera,/ che resta senza un soldo al fin del giuoco” [Whomever searches, whomever wanders and desires, whomever sleeps, and warms themselves without a fire, whomever believes that he will enrich himself, and does not think things through, will end up penniless at the end of the game] (see A. Dorigato, in Pietro Longhi, exhibition catalogue, Venice, Museo Correr, December 4, 1993 – April 4, 1994, pp. 212-3, cat. no. 101, reproduced p. 212)."

Longhi’s composition relies heavily on an earlier protoype by Francesco Guardi today at Ca’ Rezzonico which, like the Baden-Salem painting ascribed to Longhi, was conceived as a pair with a painting of the nuns’ parlatorio at San Zaccaria (see A. Morassi, Guardi. I dipinti, Venice 1984, vol. I, pp. 351-2, cat. no. 233, reproduced vol. II, fig. 253, and the parlatoio fig. 252). Pignatti believes Guardi’s version to have been painted after Longhi’s but for stylistic reasons Morassi dates Guardi’s pair to circa 1750, and it is therefore more reasonable to assume it would have been the other way around.

Longhi takes delight in packing his scene with narrative detail: masked gentlemen stand at a gambling table far left whilst a boy carries refreshments on a tray nearby. A masked gentleman approaches a masked lady, perhaps the mother of the small boy in a harlequin costume, and by the expression of the maid beside her (who uncovers her face to smile at the viewer) he is making inappropriate advances. The finely-dressed woman in the center seems unaffected by the advances of the gentleman beside her, whose insistence is determined by the ungentlemanly manner with which he grasps her purple cloak. The unmasked old man lecherously admires through his monocle the young maiden spinning yarn, while another man offers her what appears to be a room-key (perhaps suggesting that she can satisfy the old man’s desires in a room put at their disposal nearby). A man takes notes at a gambling table to the right, and other unmasked figures, in more simple attire, converse in the background. The ridotto’s darkness is lit up by the presence of the beautifully-dressed lady in the center, the lace and satin of her dress like the gold brocade of the costume of the man standing next to her shimmer in the penumbra. The numerous hooded and masked figures in the crowded interior add to the general air of mystery in the ridotto. Not only does Longhi convincingly depict these everyday scenes of 18^th-century Venice, but he does so with startling playfulness: indeed Alessandro’s moralizing inscription seems rather at odds with his father’s conception.