1702-1785 Italian Pietro Longhi Galleries Pietro Longhi was born in Venice in the parish of Saint Maria, first child of the silversmith Alessandro Falca and his wife, Antonia. He adopted the Longhi last name when he began to paint. He was initially taught by the Veronese painter Antonio Balestra, who then recommended the young painter to apprentice with the Bolognese Giuseppe Maria Crespi, who was highly regarded in his day for both religious and genre painting. He was married in 1732 to Caterina Maria Rizzi. Among his early paintings are some altarpieces and religious themes. In 1734, he completed frescoes in the walls and ceiling of the hall in Ca' Sagredo, representing the Death of the giants. Henceforward, his work would lead him to be viewed in the future as the Venetian William Hogarth, painting subjects and events of everyday life in Venice. The gallant interior scenes reflect the 18th century's turn towards the private and the bourgeois. Many of his paintings show Venetians at play, such as the depiction of the crowd of genteel citizens awkwardly gawking at a freakish Indian rhinoceros (see image). This painting chronicles Clara the rhinoceros brought to Europe in 1741 by a Dutch sea captain and impresario from Leyden, Douvemont van der Meer. This rhinoceros was exhibited in Venice in 1751. There are two versions of this painting, nearly identical except for the unmasked portraits of two men in Ca' Rezzonico version. Ultimately, there may be a punning joke to the painting, since the young man on the left holds aloft the sawed off horn (metaphor for cuckoldry) of the animal. Perhaps this explains the difference between the unchaperoned women. Other paintings chronicle the daily activities such as the gambling parlors (Riddoti) that proliferated in the 18th century. In some, the insecure or naive posture and circumstance, the puppet-like delicacy of the persons, seem to suggest a satirical perspective of the artists toward his subjects. Nearly half of the figures in his genre paintings are faceless, hidden behind Venetian Carnival masks. Like Crespi before him, Longhi was commissioned to paint seven canvases documenting the seven Catholic sacraments. Longhi is well-known as a draughtsman, whose drawings were often done for their own sake, rather than as studies for paintings. Pietro's son, Alessandro, was also an accomplished painter. A paraphrase of Bernard Berenson states that "Longhi painted for the Venetians passionate about painting, their daily lives, in all dailiness, domesticity, and quotidian mundane-ness. In the scenes regarding the hairdo and the apparel of the lady, we find the subject of gossip of the inopportune barber, chattering of the maid; in the school of dance, the amiable sound of violins. It is not tragic... but upholds a deep respect of customs, of great refinement, with an omnipresent good humor distinguishes the paintings of the Longhi from those of Hogarth, at times pitiless and loaded with omens of change".  Related Paintings of Pietro Longhi :. | Die Furlana | Portrat einer Patrizierfamilie | The Morgenschokolode | Der Apotheker | The visit in the lord |
Related Artists:
William Sharp
British 1749-1824,was an English line-engraver born in London. He was originally apprenticed to what is called a bright engraver, and practised as a writing engraver, but gradually became inspired by the higher branches of the engraver's art. Among his earlier plates are some illustrations, after Stothard, for the Novelists' Magazine. He engraved the "Doctors Disputing on the Immaculateness of the Virgin" and the "Ecce Homo" of Guido Reni, the "St Cecilia" of Domenichino, the "Virgin and Child" of Dolci, and the portrait of John Hunter of Sir Joshua Reynolds. His style of eta-graving is thoroughly masterly and original, excellent in its play of line and rendering of half-tints and of "colour." He died at Chiswick on the 25th of July 1824. In his youth, owing to his hotly expressed adherence to the politics of Paine and Horne Tooke, he was examined by the privy council on a charge of treason. Mesmer and Brothers found in Sharp a stanch believer; and for long he maintained Joanna Southcott at his own expense. As an engraver he achieved a European reputation, and at the time of his death he enjoyed the honour of being a member of the Imperial Academy of Vienna and of the Royal Academy of Munich.
Marguerite Gerard
Marguerite Gerard (28 January 1761 in Grasse - 18 May 1837 in Paris) was a French painter and etcher. She was the daughter of Marie Gilette and perfumer Claude Gerard. At 8 years-old she became the sister-in-law of Jean-Honore Fragonard, and when she was 14 she became his pupil, and she often worked with him. She was also the aunt of the artist Alexandre-Évariste Fragonard.
Mariano Fortuny y Marsal
1838-1874 Spanish Mariano Fortuny y Marsal Gallery He was born in Reus, a town near Taragona in the autonomous community of Catalonia in Spain. His father died when he was an infant, his mother by age 12, thus Mariano was raised by his grandfather, a cabinet-maker. His grandfather taught him to make wax figurines. At the age of 9, at a public competition in his town a local patron, Domingo Soberno, encouraged further study. At the age of 14 years he moved to Barcelona with his grandfather. A sculptor, Domingo Taleru, secured him a pension of to allow him to attend the Academy of Barcelona. There he studied for four years under Claudio Lorenzale, and in March of 1857 he gained a scholarship that entitled him to two years of studies in Rome starting in 1858. There he studied drawing and grand manner styles. In 1859, he was called by the Spanish government to depict the campaigns of the Spanish-Moroccan War. The expedition lasted for only about six months, and he returned to Spain in the summer of 1860. The battle of Tetuan by Mariano Fortuny (1863-73)Since the days of Velazquez, there had been a tradition in Spain of memorializing battles and victories in paint; and on the basis of his experiences, Fortuny was commissioned by the city of Barcelona to paint a large canvas diorama of the capture of the camps of Muley-el-Abbas and Muley-el-Hamed by the Spanish army. He began his composition of The battle of Tetuan on a canvas fifteen metres long; but though it worked on and off on it during the next decade, he never finished it. The greater influence of this travel on Fortuny was his subsequent fascination with the exotic themes of the world of Morocco, painting both individuals and imagined court scenes. He visited Paris in 1868 and shortly afterwards married Cecilia de Madrazo, the daughter of Federico Madrazo, who would become curator of the Prado Museum in Madrid. Together, they had a son, Mariano Fortuny y Madrazo, who became a well-known fashion and tapestry designer. Another visit to Paris in 1870 was followed by a two years' stay at Granada, but then he returned to Rome, where he died somewhat suddenly on the 21st of November 1874 from an attack of tertian ague, or malaria , contracted while painting in the open air at Naples and Portici in the summer of 1874. Fortuny paintings are colorful, with a vivacious iridescent brushstroke, that at times recalls the softness of Rococo painting but also anticipates impressionist brushwork, Fortuny??s recollection of Morocco is not a costume ball, but a fierce, realistic portrait which includes bare-chested warriors. Richard Muther states: ??his marvellously sensitive eye ?? discerned the stalls of Moorish carpet-sellers, with little figures swarming, and the rich display of woven stuffs of the East; the weary attitude of old Arabs sitting in the sun; the sombre, brooding faces of strange snake-charmers and magicians. This is no Parisian East??every one here speaks Arabic??. Fortuny often painted scenes where contemporary life had still not shaken off the epaulets and decorations of ancient traditions such a the ????Burial of a matador???? and couples signing marriage contracts (La Vicaria). Each has the dazzle of bric-a-brac [1]ornament, but as in his painting of the ????Judgement of the model????, that painterly decorative air of Rococo and Romanticism was fading into academicism and left to confront the naked reality of the represented object. He inherited Goya??s eye for the paradox of ceremony and reality.