9. The Grand Canal in the Vicinity of
Santa Maria della Carita, 1726.

Oil on canvas, 90 x 132 cm.

Private Collection.

 

 

Though these young women lived like prisoners inside palaces with barred windows, somewhat like Oriental women, occupying themselves with embroidery and making the marvellous lace on which Venice prided itself, they were suddenly emancipated through marriage and never again knew such crippling restraints on their freedom to be alluring. Those whose behaviour remained irreproachable drew from their devotion a self-restraint imposed neither by a family-oriented mindset nor the opinion of a libertine society. Since marriage was considered a formality importing little gravity, this forgetting of all duty led naturally to an abandonment of family life. They would spend the entire day out in the open air. Casinos served as a rendezvous point. There was something for the ladies, as well as for their husbands. Their children were like pretty dolls, dressed in rich outfits and prepared with good manners. As for the adolescents, they shocked travellers with the rowdiness that Venetians found amusing.

 

Discipline having lost its authority in schools, total capriciousness reigned in education. That of the writer Goldoni can serve as an example. In Rimini, bored with philosophical subtleties and passionate about ancient clowns and the theatre, he found a troupe of comedians made up almost entirely of his own countrymen. Under the pretext of going to Chioggia to kiss and greet his mother, he boarded their gondola and embarked on their journey. After that jaunt, having received a scholarship to a theological school in Pavia, he took up wearing the cloth with other worldly and stylish young abbots. But instead of applying himself to canon or civil law, he concentrated on fencing and the pleasurable arts, that is to say, all the games of society that a perfect gentleman could not ignore. Nevertheless, this life of extravagance did not prevent him, when in Chioggia, from composing a sermon that conferred on him a reputation for eloquence.

 

As far as convents were concerned, the cloister did not prove to be an adequate barrier between the recluses and the outside world. One of Longhi’s most interesting canvases at the Correr Museum is precisely a representation of a visit by patricians to a nunnery. The impression is entirely profane. Through the barred windows, the nuns and boarders appear to lend a self-satisfied ear to the sounds from outside. For the amusement of this attractive company, whose cuffs and garments bear typically Venetian floral embroidery, a small stage has been set up in a corner, while a beggar asks alms from a group of noble lords.