The little concert

On the back of this canvas Longhi signed and dated it, Pietro Longhi 1741, and that plain inscription matters more than it looks. It marks the moment he turned to the thing he would paint for the rest of his life, the interior world of Venice. Here a few people gather in the rooms of a noble house. Some sit at cards, others take up violins for a little music among themselves, an ordinary afternoon rather than a grand occasion. On the wall a portrait of a procurator, one of the Republic's high officials, tells you whose household this is. The pale, even light and the small scale are already the manner Venetians would soon ask him for again and again. The painting later came to the Gallerie dell'Accademia with the collection Girolamo Contarini left the gallery.