A adivinha

By 1740 Venice was living on charm. Its trading power was long gone, but the city had reinvented itself as Europe's carnival, and its painters turned from thundering altarpieces to lighter pleasures. Piazzetta, who had made his name on dark, dramatic religious scenes, painted this sunlit country idyll near the end of his life. A young woman in a broad straw hat looks out at us while another seems to read her palm, though nobody has ever settled what is really passing between the four figures. Some see fortune-telling, some a coded lesson in love. Piazzetta left it open. The Accademia in Venice, which holds it now, bought the picture in 1887, long after such country flirtations had gone out of fashion.