A Family Having Coffee

On 29 December 1720 a coffee house opened under the arcades of Piazza San Marco, the one Venetians soon called after its owner, Floriano, and still know as Florian. By the middle of the century the city was full of such places, and in 1750 the playwright Carlo Goldoni put one on stage in his comedy The Coffee House. Coffee had moved indoors as well, into rooms like this one, where a family takes it at home.

The museum sees the scene as a little puppet theatre, its people holding the poses and even the faces of marionettes, and it calls the easy, middle-class spirit of the picture Goldonian. Goldoni himself wrote a sonnet to Longhi, calling the painter's brush, the one that searches for the truth, the sister of his own muse. Longhi knew Verona from his youth, when he trained here with Antonio Balestra and was set to grand academic subjects that, the museum says, did not suit him.