Longhi and the rhino Clara

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!

First of all, not a rhino, but a lady rhino, and her name was Clara. She was born in Bengal in 1738 and as a puppy she remained orphaned of mother. The director of the Dutch East India Company in Bengal Jan Albert Sichterman looked after her on his property until the size of the animal forced him to sell her. In 1740, Clara was ceded to Captain Douwe Mout van der Meer, who took her to Holland and began to show it. The public performances of the animal in Europe quickly became so successful that Van der Meer left his profession to start a real European tour with the animal. In fact, the rhino was the subject of attention not only of naturalists and scientists, who otherwise would not have seen this live specimen, but also from the simple public. Clara was shown in all major European cities: Rotterdam (1741), Antwerp, Brussels (1743), Hamburg (1744), Hanover, Berlin, Vienna (1746), Regensburg, Freiberg, Dresden, Meissen (1747), Bern, Zurich , Basel, Schaffhausen, Stuttgart, Augsburg, Nuremberg and Würzburg (1748), Reims, Paris (1749), Marseille, Naples, Rome (1750), Bologna, Milan, Venice (1751), London, Prague, then Warsaw, Krakow, Gdansk (1752), Copenhagen, and again London.


In 1751, Clara was the main attraction of the Venice Carnival! The pachyderm, which weighed 3 quintals, was the subject of much attention, from every social category. And so it was that Pietro Longhi was called by at least two noble families to make a portrait of the famous rhino.
It was not the first time that the animal attracted the attention of painters, since the French artist Jean-Baptiste Oudry painted its effigy in Paris in 1749. Longhi shows it while eating straw inside the shed (a "casoto" one would say in Venetian) that was prepared for her to exhibit. The fact of being hornless immediately catches the eye. The tamer is holdng her horn indeed. It is not known whether the horn was lost by the rhino for her bad health, or whether it was cut off for safety reasons. Behind a parapet we see, next to the tamer (perhaps Van der Meer himself), two noticeable masks, a nobleman and a noblewoman, perhaps the very same Grimanis who commissioned the painting. Further back, a commoner wears the moretta - the typical female black mask held tightly between the teeth -, suggesting the carnival atmosphere. People watched the huge Indian mammal, which ate at will, including oranges and tobacco, and also drank beer! The entrance prices to see the beast were also quite expensive, but at Carnival everyone was willing to spend on fun. It seems that Van der Mander earned an exorbitant amount during that Venetian carnival and that he lost everything in the gambling casinos that were so irresistible in 18th-century Venice...

There is an autographed replica of the painting, now preserved at the National Gallery in London. With few differences, this version was made for Gerolamo Mocenigo, as an inscription at the rear of the canvas declares.

Longhi found himself portraying several other exotic animals: at the Querini Stampalia Foundation there is a portrait of a lion, made during the 1752 Carnival, while at the Leoni Montanari Foundation in Vicenza that of an elephant in 1772, painted no less than for Marina Sagredo Pisani!


Some other interesting readings:

https://carezzonico.visitmuve.it/en/il-museo/percorsi-e-collezioni/second-floor/longhi-room/

https://carezzonico.visitmuve.it/en/il-museo/percorsi-e-collezioni/second-floor/longhi-room/