Both men and women
in these nocturnal scenes wear muffs, trimmed with fur, and secured
around their waist by girdles.

Theatres, masked balls, banquets and coffee-houses, music-parties in
villa-gardens, the assemblies of literary coteries, promenades on the
piazza, and Carnival processions, obtain their due share of attention
from this vigilant observer. But, as is the way with Longhi, only
episodes are treated. He does not, like some painters of our own
time--like Mr. Frith, R.A., for instance--attempt to bring the
accumulated details of a complex scene before us. He leaves the context
of his chosen incident to be divined.

The traffic of the open streets--quack-doctors on their platforms with a
crowd of gaping dupes around them, mountebanks performing tricks, the
criers of stewed plums and sausages, fortune-tellers, itinerant
musicians, improvisatory poets bawling out their octave stanzas, cloaked
serenaders twangling mandolines--such motives may be found in fair
abundance among Longhi's genre-pieces. Nor does he altogether neglect
the country. Many of his pictures are devoted to hunting-parties,
riding-lessons, shooting and fishing, all the amusements of the Venetian
_villeggiatura_. Peasants lounging over their wine or pottage at a
rustic table are depicted with no less felicity than the beau and
coquette in their glory. The grimy interior of a village-tavern is
portrayed with the same gusto as a fine lady's gilt saloon.

V.

Longhi used to tell Goldoni that they--the painter and the
playwright--were brethren in Art; and one of the poet's sonnets records
this saying:--

"Longhi, tu che la mia Musa sorella
Chiami del tuo pennel che cerca il vero."

It seems that their contemporaries were alive to the similar qualities
and the common aims of the two men; for Gasparo Gozzi drew a parallel
between them in a number of his Venetian Gazzetta. Indeed the
resemblance is more than merely superficial. Longhi surveyed human life
with the same kindly glance and the same absence of gravity or depth of
intuition as Goldoni. They both studied Nature, but Nature only in her
genial moods. They both sincerely aimed at truth, but avoided truths
which were sinister or painful.

This renders the designation of Venetian Hogarth peculiarly
inappropriate to Longhi. There is neither tragedy nor satire, and only a
thin silvery vein of humour, in his work. Indeed it may be questioned
whether he was in any exact sense humor