Alessandro Longhi
A Portrait of a Young Gentleman
Oil on canvas (relined). 99 x 82 cm.
Alessandro Longhi is the most interesting 18th century Venetian painter of portraits - a genre which was in comparatively low demand in the city of water at this time. Among his greatest works are a portrait of the playwright Carlo Goldoni (Venice, Casa Goldoni) and of Reverendo Sante Bonelli (Museo Civico Turin). Pedrocco dates this portrait of an unknown nobleman in a brown coat, which was formerly wrongly ascribed to the artist's father Pietro Longhi, to around 1788. It was thus painted just a few years before the fall of the old republic of Venice, which was first conquered by Napoleon and then fell to Austria after the Congress of Vienna.
Certificate
Dr. Filippo Pedrocco, Venice 3.12.2000.
Provenance
The Ross collection, USA, Museum of Fine Arts Boston (inv. 17.588). - Private ownership, Italy.
Literature
L. Brosch in: Thieme/Becker 1929 (attr. to Pietro Longhi). - T. Pignatti: Pietro Longhi, 1968, p. 132 (not attr. to Pietro Longhi). - B.B. Frederiksen / F. Zeri: Census of Pre-Nineteeth-Century Italian paintings in North American Public Collections, Cambridge 1972, p. 108 (not attr. to Pietro Longhi). - F. Pedrocco: Il Sttecento a Venezia. I Vedutisti, p. 24, illus. (attr. to Alessandro Longhi).