Volume II Part 18 (1/1)

VII

A series of frescoes attributed to Pietro Longhi should also here be mentioned They decorate three sides of the staircase of the Palazzo Sina (formerly Grassi) on the Grand Canal The balustrades of an open loggia or gallery are painted with bold architectural relief Behind the pilasters of this balcony a ures pro in Carnival costuala dress of the last century Elderly ladies are draped in the black zendado of Venetian aristocracy Grave senators bend their courtly heads beneath the weight of snowy periwigs Lacqueys in livery and running foot chocolate or wines on silver trays This scene of fashi+onable life is depicted with vivacity; the studies of face and attitude are true to nature; an agreeable air of good tone and sober animation pervades the whole society Probably many of the persons introduced were copied froreatest merits was the dexterity hich he reproduced the main actors in the _bel nise their acquaintances upon his canvasto restoration, it is difficult to say how far the fresco-painting ell executed, and to what extent the original tone has been preserved At present the colouring is sohi's brush-work suffered considerably when the palace was internally reo

VIII

It only rehi's sketch-book This collection of original drawings, nue variety of studies (several pages being filled on front and back with upwards of ten separate figures) was forhi It came into the possession of the patrician Teodoro Correr, who bequeathed it, together with the rest of his immense hi's paintings, this sketch-book is invaluable

It brings us close to the artist's methods, aims, and personal predilections in the choice of s are done in hard black pencil or chalk, heightened and corrected hite; a few in soft red chalk Unfortunately, they have suffered to a large extent fro; and this injury is likely to increase with ti of the volume which contains them

Studies from the nude are conspicuous by their extreme rarity and want of force Great attention has been paid to the details of costume and furniture The _zendado_, the _bautta_, the hoop, the bag-wig, the fop's coat and waistcoat, the patrician's civil entle care Painters at the easel, ballet-girls with castanets, rooms and lacqueys, men on horseback, serenaders with lute or -entleondoliers rowing, little girls in go-carts or fenced chairs, sellers of tarts upon the street, country boys in taverns, chests of drawers, pots, pans, jugs, gourds, wine-flasks, parrots in cages, ladies at the clavichord, queues, fans, books, snuff-boxes, tables, petticoats, desks, the draperies of doors and igs, foot in the doorway or whispering tender nothings at a beauty's ear, oldin arm-chairs, embroiderers at work, muffs, copper water-buckets, nurses with babies in their aro of this raceful, but limited, series of transcripts froht ”the proper study of mankind is man;” and man as a clothed, sociable, well-behaved animal

His sketches are remarkable for their strenuous sincerity--their search after the right attitude, their serious effort to hit the precise line wanted, their suggested movement and seizure of life in the superficies

They have a sustained air of good-breeding, refined intelligence, and genial syht never have existed so far as Longhi was concerned I do not think that a tree, a cloud, or even a floill be found a the miscellaneous objects he so carefully studied and drew so deftly The world heon the surface-paths of daily intercourse Even here, we do not detect the slightest interest in passionate or painful aspects of experience All Longhi's people are well-to-do and placid in their different degrees The peasants in the taverns do not brawl, nor the fine gentle-rooary, disease, and every for He does not care for anied canary, and a stiffly drawn riding-horse, the brute creation is not represented in these sketches No sarcasrossness, no violence of any kind, disturbs the cal curiosity of his hout is less robust than sensitively delicate We feel a soestion of Watteau's elysius In fine, the sketch-book corroborates the ihi's finished pictures

IX

With all his lii rehly respectable painter In an age of social corruption he remained free froood repute We cannot study his ithout sur that manners in Italy were more refined than in our own country at that epoch--a conclusion to which we are also led by Goldoni's, Carlo Gozzi's, and even Casanova's Memoirs Morally licentious and politically decadent the Venetians undoubtedly were; but they were neither brutal, nor cruel, nor savage, nor sottish Even the less admirable aspects of their social life--its wasteful luxury and effeence in pleasure--have been treated with so much reserve by this humane artist, that youth and innocence can suffer no contamination frohtful for their gracious realism, for their nave touch upon the follies of the period Those who love to dream themselves back into the days of hoops and perukes--and there are lect to hi