lf been at home in the masquerade, has accompanied the
lady to the fortune-teller, and, leaning over her graceful shoulder, has
listened to the soothsayer's murmurs. He has attended balls and routs,
danced minuets, and gossiped over tiny cups of China tea. He is the last
chronicler of the Venetian feasts, and with him ends that long series
that began with Giorgione's concert and which developed and passed
through suppers at Cana and banquets at the houses of Levi and the
Pharisee. We are no longer confronted with the sumptuosity of Bonifazio
and Veronese; the immense tables covered with gold and silver plate, the
long lines of guests robed in splendid brocades, the stream of servants
bearing huge salvers, or the bands of musicians, nor are there any more
alfresco concerts, with nymphs and bacchantes. Instead there are
masques, the life of the Ridotto or gaming-house, routs and intrigues in
dainty boudoirs, and surreptitious love-making in that city of eternal
carnival where the _bauta_ was almost a national costume. Longhi
holds that post which in French art is filled by Watteau, Fragonard,
and Lancret, the painters of _fetes galantes_, and though he cannot be
placed on an equal footing with those masters, he is representative and
significant enough. On his canvases are preserved for us the mysteries
of the toilet, over which ladies and young men of fashion dawdled
through the morning, the drinking of chocolate in _neglige_, the
momentous instants spent in choosing headgear and fixing patches, the
towers of hair built by the modish coiffeur--children trooping in, in
hoops and uniforms, to kiss their mother's hand, the fine gentleman
choosing a waistcoat and ogling the pretty embroideress, the pert young
maidservant slipping a billet-doux into a beauty's hand under her
husband's nose, the old beau toying with a fan, or the discreet abbe
taking snuff over the morning gazette. The grand ladies of Longhi's day
pay visits in hoop and farthingale, the beaux make "a leg," and the
lacqueys hand chocolate. The beautiful Venetians and their gallants
swim through the gavotte or gamble in the Ridotto, or they hasten to
assignations, disguised in wide _bauti_ and carrying preposterous muffs.
The Correr Museum contains a number of his paintings and also his book
of original sketches. One of the most entertaining of his canvases
represents a visit of patricians to a nuns' parlour. The nuns and their
pupils lend an attentive ear to the w