The Faint

c. 1744

Pietro Longhi

Painter, Venetian, 1702 - 1785

In a room with avocado-green walls, three people cluster around and support a noticeably pale young woman who leans back on a pillow, as an older man looks on in this horizontal painting. All the people have light skin, gray or white hair, and wear long, voluminous dresses or robes. The woman and pillow are held in place by the two men and one woman around her. The swooning woman’s heavily lidded eyes are barely open, and her thin lips are closed. Her left hand, to our right, rests gently on her breast, while her other hand hangs limply by her side. Her pastel-pink gown is open down the front over a milky white, low-cut chemise and a pale yellow underskirt. Wide, lace ruffles hang from her elbow-length sleeves, and she wears white stockings and white, low-heeled shoes. The white pillow is edged with a pink ribbon tied into bows at the corners. Directly behind her, a man with long, curly, gray hair looks down at the woman’s pale face, and a second man, to our right, looks off in that direction as he braces her body. The second man has curly, blond hair and wears a yellow robe. One black shoe with a silver buckle pokes out under the hem. To our left, a woman slightly bends over the swooning woman, facing our right in profile. Her low cap or head scarf is lined with flowers at the back of her head over steel gray hair. She wears a teal-blue, satin gown with wide, sheer cuffs over her forearms. The front of her low-cut bodice is lined with a textured, lemon-yellow material. Her right fingertips, closer to us, brush the top of the glass vial she holds in her other hand. To our right and a bit apart from the group, an older man faces the swooning woman in profile, stooping slightly, and gestures toward her with one hand. His long, wavy, gray hair falls to mid-back and some sweeps over his shoulder, nearly reaching his waist. He wears a blue robe with white cuffs. The wall behind the group is covered with green wallpaper with a floral motif picked out in moss green against the lighter background. Shamrock-green curtains hang along the right edge of the painting, possibly over a door. A honey-yellow sofa with fringed upholstery sits along the wall to our left, extending off that edge of the painting. A black tricorn hat and piece of rumpled, white fabric sit at the center of the sofa, which overlaps the corner of a wooden mantle. A chubby, baby-like, winged putto seems to stand on the mantle, holding up the edge of a gold frame, presumably of a painting hanging over the fireplace. A blue and white vase sits near the putto on the mantle. To our left, in front of the sofa, a round gaming table is toppled onto the muted, marigold-orange floor. The surface of the table is mottled with areas of white, pale yellow, blue, and sage green that may represent people, possibly in a landscape. Coins spill from a red purse near a deck of cards scattered on the floor near the upended table.

Media Options

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A woman in a powder-pink gown seems to be at the center of a domestic crisis as she sinks back, deathly pale, into a chair. The explanation for her indisposition is not hard to discover. A table has been tipped over at the left, spilling cards, an open purse, and coins on to the floor. The lady has been gambling. Dealt an unfortunate hand of cards, she pretended to faint, conveniently upsetting the table as she swooned. Her servants and companions rush to her aid, while the man on the right may be a doctor, or a gambling partner who had been winning.

Longhi's fame rested on such intimate glimpses of Venetian upperclass life in a period of refined decadence. His aristocratic subjects were also his patrons, and they would have appreciated this accurate portrayal of an elegant interior with a chinoiserie card table and moss-green damask on the walls. The realistic comedy of Longhi's playwright friend Carlo Goldoni may have been a source of inspiration, but Longhi's vignettes lack Goldoni's satirical bite. The feathery touch of Longhi's brush and the filtered light soften the scene, as do the pastel colors and the diminutive, doll-like actors.

More information on this painting can be found in the Gallery publication Italian Paintings of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, which is available as a free PDF https://www.nga.gov/content/dam/ngaweb/research/publications/pdfs/italian-paintings-17th-and-18th-centuries.pdf

On View

West Building Main Floor, Gallery 32

Artwork overview

  • Medium

    oil on canvas

  • Credit Line

    Samuel H. Kress Collection

  • Dimensions

    overall: 50 x 61.7 cm (19 11/16 x 24 5/16 in.)

  • Accession

    1939.1.63

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

Prince Alberto Giovanelli [1876-1937], Venice, until c. 1930.[1] (Count Alessandro Contini Bonacossi, Rome); purchased 1931 by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York;[2] gift 1939 to NGA.
[1] According to typed note from the Kress Records, NGA curatorial files.
[2] According to typed note from the Kress Records, NGA curatorial files, and Fern Rusk Shapley, Catalogue of Italian Paintings, 2 vols., Washington, D.C., 1979: 1:268; see also The Kress Collection Digital Archive, https://kress.nga.gov/Detail/objects/2167.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1933

  • A Century of Progress: Exhibition of Paintings and Sculpture, The Art Institute of Chicago, 1933, no. 149.

1936

  • Venetian Painting of the XVIIIth Century, M. Knoedler & Co., Inc., New York, 1936, no. 16.

1938

  • Tiepolo and His Contemporaries, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1938, no. 23, repro.

1993

  • Pietro Longhi, Museo Correr, Venice, 1993-1994, no. 44, repro.

Bibliography

1931

  • Venturi, Lionello. Pitture italiane in America. Milan, 1931. Translated as Italian Painting in America. 3 vols. New York and Milan, 1933: 3:pl. 600.

1932

  • Frankfurter, Alfred M. "Eighteenth Century Venice in a New York Collection." The Fine Arts 19 (December 1932): 10, repro. 9.

1938

  • Frankfurter, Alfred M. "Tiepolo comes to New York: The XVIII Century Venetians at the Metropolitan." Art News 36 (12 March 1938): 24, repro. 10.

1939

  • Tietze, Hans. Tintoretto. New York, 1948: pl. 118a.

1941

  • Preliminary Catalogue of Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1941: 109-110, no. 174, as The Simulated Faint.

1942

  • Book of Illustrations. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1942: 243, repro. 133.

1946

  • Longhi, Roberto. Viatico per cinque secoli di pittura veneziana. Florence, 1946: 69, pl. 158.

1953

  • Bacchelli, Riccardo, and Roberto Longhi. Teatro e immagini del settecento italiano. Turin, 1953: 128, pl. 16.

1956

  • Moschini, Vittorio. Pietro Longhi. Milan, 1956: pl. 18.

1959

  • Paintings and Sculpture from the Samuel H. Kress Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1959: 243, repro.

1960

  • Pallucchini 1960, 180-181, fig. 461.

1963

  • Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. New York, 1963 (reprinted 1964 in French, German, and Spanish): 318, repro.

1965

  • Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 76.

1968

  • Pignatti, Terisio. Pietro Longhi. Venice, 1968: 116-117, pl. 67.

  • National Gallery of Art. European Paintings and Sculpture, Illustrations. Washington, 1968: 67, repro.

1969

  • Pignatti, Terisio. Pietro Longhi: Paintings and Drawings. Translated by Pamela Waley. London, 1969: 104, pl. 67, color pl. III (detail).

1972

  • Fredericksen, Burton B., and Federico Zeri. Census of Pre-Nineteenth Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections. Cambridge, Mass., 1972: 109.

1973

  • Shapley, Fern Rusk. Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: Italian Schools, XVI-XVIII Century. London, 1973: 136, fig. 268.

1974

  • Pignatti, Terisio. L'opera completa di Pietro Longhi. Milan, 1974: 88, no. 40, color pl. 15.

1975

  • Paulson, Ronald. Emblem and Expression: Meaning in English Art of the Eighteenth Century. London, 1975: 110-111, fig. 66.

  • European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1975: 198, repro.

  • Pignatti, Terisio. Pietro Longhi dal disegno alla pittura. Venice, 1975: color pl. I.

1979

  • Shapley, Fern Rusk. Catalogue of the Italian Paintings. 2 vols. Washington, 1979: 1:267-268; 2:pl. 183.

1982

  • Sohm, Philip L. "Pietro Longhi and Carlo Goldoni: Relations between Painting and Theater." Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 45 (1982): 264-273, figs. 3,4 (detail).

1984

  • Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Rev. ed. New York, 1984: 348, no. 487, color repro., as The Simulated Faint.

1985

  • European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 232, repro.

1986

  • Spike, John. Giuseppe Maria Crespi and the Emergence of Genre Painting in Italy. Exh. cat. Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, 1986: 196.

1992

  • National Gallery of Art. National Gallery of Art, Washington. New York, 1992: 113, repro.

1993

  • Mariuz, Adriano, Giuseppe Pavanello, and Giandomenico Romanelli. Pietro Longhi. Exh. cat. Museo Correr, Venice, 1993: 16, 17, 20, 88, no. 44, fig. 4 (detail), color pl. 89.

1996

  • De Grazia, Diane, and Eric Garberson, with Edgar Peters Bowron, Peter M. Lukehart, and Mitchell Merling. Italian Paintings of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 1996: 171-176, color repro. 172.

2001

  • Southgate, M. Therese. The Art of JAMA II: Covers and Essays from The Journal of the American Medical Association. Chicago, 2001: 44-45, 209, color repro.

Wikidata ID

Q20177943

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