The Soothsayer

By the middle of the 18th century Venice lived a large part of the year in Carnival, and among its licensed pleasures were the fortune tellers who set up for the fashionable crowds. This small canvas from 1752 shows one at work, an older woman reading the future for an elegant client while others look on. Longhi treated it the way he treated a card game or a dressmaker's visit, as one more ritual of the city worth recording exactly. The Republic was slipping quietly from power in these years, and its citizens spent freely on masks, gaming and diversions like this one. The picture is barely larger than a sheet of paper, about 48 by 60 centimetres.