Pietro Falca, known as Longhi, was one of the most appreciated painters in 18th-century Venice. Having little experimented with other subjects and techniques, his production is almost entirely characterized by oil paintings on canvas, of rectangular and small size, with genre scenes. Such small paintings found enormous appreciation in Venice, becoming object of collectors' attention. They were commissioned in series, or individually, to remember a particular event, to celebrate a passion, to enhance a character, or to commemorate a family. It is perhaps indubitable that the quality of these paintings is not always perfect, since often the painter shows some anatomical uncertainty, and compositional repetitiveness. He was probably esteemed just and especially for the freshness and simplicity with which he painted scenes of everyday life, far from Tiepolo's stature, and from Canaletto's the copy of reality. Whether it was a noblewoman who bought a new dress, the arrival of an ambassador with important news for the family, a toilet scene, a poor peasant dinner, a geography lesson, a minuet, a mysterious bauta, a pancake vendor, an alchemist's shop, every person in his painting found equal dignity. Most of times, there is a soft hint of mockery, which almost becomes soft collective irony, addressed to tje contemporary society and especially to that political class, now in perceived decline and at the mercy of historical events. Those who want to appreciate Longhi's painting in Venice will need to visit at least three museums: the Academy Galleries, the Querini Stampalia Foundation, and Ca’ Rezzonico. In this post, we will consider one of Longhi’s most famous paintings, perhaps because the most bizarre: The Rhinocerous, in the version preserved in Ca' Rezzonico. The cartouche painted on the right of the painting reveals the occasion that underlies the realization of the work: "True Portrait of a Rhinoceros brought to Venice in the year 1751: made by Pietro Longhi by commission of the nobleman Giovanni Grimani dei Servi Venetian Noble". What Longhi fails to remember is that in the mid-eighteenth century that rhinoceros was a true show-star in Europe!
