Pietro Longhi
(b Venice, 1700–02; d Venice, 8 May 1785).
Painter and draughtsman. His father, Alessandro Falca, encouraged his
natural talent for drawing, and he studied under Antonio Balestra for
‘several years’, according to his son, Alessandro Longhi. Balestra
probably took Pietro to Bologna and recommended him to Giuseppe Maria
Crespi. No documents exist on Longhi until 1732, the year he married,
and some doubt has been expressed about his study with Crespi. There is
no trace of Crespi’s influence in Longhi’s altarpiece for the parish
church of S Pellegrino in Bologna, St Pellegrino Condemned to Death,
installed in 1732; Crespi’s style is an intimate one, however, and would
have been inappropriate for such a large altarpiece. One of Longhi’s
first independent works, the St Pellegrino altarpiece recalls his
Venetian origins and training in its broken brushwork and colour glazes.
In another early work, the Adoration of the Magi (Venice, Scuola
Grande S Giovanni Evangelista), documented in 1733 as at S Maria
Materdomini, Venice, the subject-matter lends itself to a more domestic
treatment, and Crespi’s influence is evident. Both these works contain
passages anticipating Longhi’s subsequent development as a genre
painter; in each picture a boy or young man, perhaps a self-portrait,
gazes out at the spectator, unconcerned with events in the painting. The
Adoration and the St Pellegrino relate to Longhi’s
earliest-known genre subjects, the five scenes of individual shepherd
children (Bassano del Grappa, Mus. Civ., and Rovigo, Pin. Semin.).
