Figures eating and drinking in an interior

Though Pietro Longhi initially worked as a history painter following his training in the studio of Antonio Balestra, by the mid-1730s he had adapted his painterly idiom to become the most successful painter of interior scenes in eighteenth-century Venice, capturing the city’s vibrancy and colour in small- format canvases that were hugely popular among patrons. Depicting subjects from peasant street scenes to noble balls and fashionable concerts, Longhi’s innovative images served to invite the viewer into intimate spaces, showing the city as a site of seduction and enjoyment. Indeed, as the painter himself is reputed to have said, his work was designed to ‘be tasteful and give pleasure’ (A. Ravà, Pietro Longhi, Florence, 1923, pp. 27-28).

This previously unpublished painting shows a young woman seated at a table with two men, while a boy sits on the floor, drinking from a bowl. The somewhat ambiguous subject matter, with the grinning youth in a blue coat holding the terracotta jug up to the seated man’s mouth, and the coy smile on the mouth of the young lady, is typical of the sense of intrigue and playful deceit which characterises Longhi’s genre scenes. The drinking man appears to have been something of a stock figure for the painter. Presumably based on a drawing of a figure drinking in an identical manner, now in the Museo Correr, Venice, Longhi included the figure again in the background of his Farmers at the Inn (Venice, Querini Stampalia).

We are grateful to Professor Ugo Ruggeri for confirming the attribution on the basis of photographs.