A lesson in dance in eighteenth-century Venice: the celebrated work of Pietro Longhi

Those who want to know the social life of 18th-century Venice , entering the homes of the nobles and bourgeoisie, the places they frequented, understanding how they spent their days, what their activities were and what their pastimes were, should indulge in aimmersion among the paintings of Pietro Longhi (Pietro Falca; Venice, 1701 - 1785), the painter who more than any other, and more consistently, was able to tell the story of the society of 18th-century Venice, the Venice in the twilight of the Republic: if Canaletto showed us views of a Venice eternalized by a crystal-clear light, if Francesco Guardi recounted those same places veining his glimpses with an air of inconsolable nostalgia, Pietro Longhi is the artist who opens wide to us the doors of the buildings painted in the vedutisti’s works. And entering one of these houses, it would not have been difficult to witness a dance lesson like the one Longhi paints in one of his best-known works, La lezione di danza (The Dance Lesson ) precisely, now preserved at the Accademia Gallery in Venice.

Inside a small sitting room with rather bare furnishings (just a sofa lined with green satin, the same color as the upholstery, a heavy velvet curtain on the right, a couple of seats below, and a mirror on the wall) we witness a dance lesson being given by a young girl to her teacher, while a violinist imparts the rhythm, defiladed, and the girl’s mother watches the scene, sitting on a chair. On top of a stool, the maestro has propped up his tricorno, the typical three-pronged Venetian hat, and his small sword. The pure intimacy of the everyday.

The work, of which, moreover, a study is preserved with, on one side of the sheet, a sketch of the dancing couple and, on the verso, the master’s hands, is part of a series of six canvases that we imagine to be dedicated to the daily activities of the Venetian lady: the others are the Concertino, the Sarto, the Toeletta, theIndovino and the Farmacista, all of identical size and stylistically homogeneous. Moreover, the work had a certain fortune, since a reverse engraving was made of it by Jean-Jacques Flipart, and other versions would follow in later years, made by hands other than those of Pietro Longhi. Dance Lesson, along with its companion canvases, was later donated to the Galleries in 1838 by the Venetian patrician Girolamo Contarini (in the notarial deed by which the series was offered to the Accademia, on September 1 of that year, the works are referred to as Family Subjects): it is likely that the lady depicted by Longhi is a gentlewoman of the Contarini family itself, one of the oldest Venetian noble dynasties. In any case, whoever the young woman we see of the painting is, what is certain is that she is not shirking a social obligation in the Venice of the time. For a Venetian lady, attending dancing parties was in fact a fundamental moment of one’s social life: taking part in social balls was, for a patrician family, a means of flaunting one’s wealth (through clothes, jewelry) as well as weaving relationships. Knowing how to dance, therefore, was a basic requirement for a lady of the high society of 18th-century Venice.

The Dancing Lesson is one of the many skits that Longhi dedicated to Venetian life, giving rise, as has been noted, to a kind of translation in images of Carlo Goldoni’s comedy, with the characters seeming almost to play a part, moving with prissy, affected, unspontaneous poses on the stage of their existence. Goldoni and Longhi, moreover, knew each other, and there is even a sonnet by the playwright in which the painter is quoted: “Longhi tu che la mia Musa sorella / chiamare del tuo pennel che cerca il vero,” a verse in which Goldoni shows how the artist’s intent was to offer the relative a realistic narrative of what he saw, through a careful investigation of everyday reality. And that Pietro Longhi was attentive to the depiction of reality is demonstrated by the very study, preserved in the Correr Museum, in which the artist tries to prove the different positions of the master’s hand. An investigation, that of Longhi, which is expressed through a composed grace, the meticulous description of interiors and costumes, a life that seems to flow quietly.

The Venetian painter, wrote one of his near namesakes, the art historian Roberto Longhi, in his paintings describes “a patient and tenacious chronicle, in which the ironic moment is as light as a bubble of light immediately extinguished, describing the usual actions of the day: the grooming, the dull conversation, the dance lesson, the concertino, or the games in the house, the examination of the new ’andrien’ brought by the tailor and, perhaps, taken to the sideboard, the walk in the square, to the coffee shop, the visit to the ridotto.” And as in The Dance Lesson, women take on an unprecedented role, aware of their power of attraction over men, and in Venice able, moreover, to enjoy a freedom that was not granted to women living in other settings of the same era. The girl at the center of the painting in the Gallerie dell’Accademia is taking a lesson, but she is the real protagonist of the scene, and not only because the white of her rich satin dress, edged with a curious pink fur coat, stands out on this dark-toned scene, brightened only by the artificial lights of the setting: her gaze, at once vexatious and provocative, meets and at the same time shuns that of the master, while behind the violinist can do no more than watch her movements from afar. One breathes, however, in this painting as well as in others by Pietro Longhi, the air of a society in its twilight years, the atmosphere of a Venice headed toward its inexorable, unstoppable, inescapable decline: and we realize this by looking at those same characters, who appear so distant, cold, unaware. There is no criticism, no intent to denounce in Longhi’s work (perhaps there is some irony, this yes), but rather than real characters, his nobles seem to us almost like mannequins moving on a theater stage.

“Composed in an amenity of portraiture, just slightly unconcerned, the characters,” Roberto Longhi writes again, “let familiar objects and the very air that surrounds them tell their story, the story without heroism or din of those who care about reputation. They are actors who are perfectly responsible for their part, of controlled gestures, and-if they spoke-his voice suasive, rarely forced. They are the actors who played Carlo Goldoni’s comedies, unscrupulous without skepticism, witty without the exquisiteness of Marivaux’s Signor, moved without tears. Comedies, meanwhile, of wise human mediocrity. And, indeed, it would not be point arbitrary to post, under many of Longhi’s little paintings, a title that was also that of certain of Goldoni’s comedies; or perhaps one of his jokes; apart from the certainty that the two artists considered themselves brothers in the expression of that ’true’ which they both had in mind. Who knows then that such a project might not have tempted them, one or the other, and perhaps both.” Knowing the acuity of both of them, it is entirely fair to think so.

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