LONGHI, PIETRO (1702-1785), Venetian painter, cele brated for his little pictures of satiric genre, was born in He was a pupil of Antonio Balestra and Guiseppe Maria Crespi at Bologna. He has very aptly been called the Goldoni of painting, and Mariette said of him "Il devint un autre Watteau." Most of his paintings are in the public collections of Venice. The Brera collection, Milan, owns several examples of his work. They are generally on a small scale, but the staircase of the Palazzo Grassi-Stucky, now Sina, on the Canal Grande in Venice, is decorated by him with seven frescoes, representing carnival scenes. In England the National Gallery owns "The Exhibition of a Rhinoceros in an Arena," a "Domestic Group" and "The Fortune Teller"; two genre pictures are at Hampton Court palace. Many of his works have been engraved by Alessandro Longhi, Bartolozzi Cattini, Faldoni and others.
His son, ALESSANDRO LONGHI (1733-1813), was a famous portrait painter and engraver. He studied painting under the Venetian portraitist, Giuseppe Nogari, as he himself states in his book on Venetian painters, Compendio delle Vite dei Pittori Veneziani Istorici pia rinomati del presente secolo, con suoi ritratti dal naturale, delineati ed incisi (Venice, 1762). Portraits painted by Alessandro have in recent times been attributed to his famous father, who was never mentioned in his own days as a portraitist. In 1766 an academy of painters was founded at Venice. The majority of Venetian painters belonged to it, among them the two Longhi—father and son. In the list of its mem bers Pietro is described as a figure painter only; his son Ales sandro, however, is entered as a portrait painter.
See J. P. Richter, Mond Collection (1910) .