Already commonplace elsewhere, the painting of scenes from the everyday life of the social elite was a novelty in Venice when Pietro Longhi began his career in the 1730s. Here, as so often in his work, the setting is an aristocratic home, where two young ladies and their suitors or chaperones listen to a clergyman play the mandolin. The musician’s portrait likeness and sober black suit contrast sharply with the doll-like treatment of his audience, elegantly dressed. More peculiar is a striking inconsistency of scale that causes the man behind the sofa to tower over the women seated before him.
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