Conservation completed in 2019 with funding from The Young Friends of Save Venice, Beatrice & Pepe Esteve, William & Linda DeBene, Mel Oldenburg, Lizzie da Trindade Asher & Daniel Ezra, and Amy Harmon.

Ca’ Rezzonico, Venice’s museum dedicated to eighteenth-century art, houses a rich collection of 36 paintings by Pietro Longhi, all in their original gilded frames. Small in format, Longhi’s paintings portray the activities of humble peasants, skilled artisans, and wealthy Venetian patricians alike, ranging from the mundane to the marvelous. Whether they capture a domestic conversation, a music lesson, or the arrival of a rhinoceros in Venice, Longhi’s much-loved scenes give us an eyewitness view of life in Venice during the era of the Enlightenment, rendering him the “Carpaccio of the eighteenth century.”

The paintings required maintenance to remove surface dirt and to consolidate flaking paint. The gilded frames in turn necessitated full restoration treatment to preserve and protect their delicate eighteenth-century gilding. The surface of the paintings was cleaned and the old varnish removed. Flaking paint was consolidated with natural glues. Traces of old restorations were taken off. Losses to the pictorial surface were filled with gesso and inpainted, and a final coat of protective varnish was applied. The frames were cleaned and repaired; losses to the original gilding were inpainted.

For select projects, conservation dossiers in Italian containing limited textual and photographic documentation may be available for consultation by appointment at the Venice office of Save Venice and the Rosand Library & Study Center. For inquiries, please contact us at venice@savevenice.org.

Pietro Longhi (1701–1785)
Various Genre Paintings
1740s-50s, oil on panel
Approx. 60 x 50 cm each

Ca’ Rezzonico Museum: Homepage

Ca’ Rezzonico Museum: Longhi Room