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Exhibition of a Rhinoceros at Venice
Pietro Longhi · Rococo & Neoclassicism
- Artist
- Pietro Longhi (1701–1785)
- Date
- 1751
- Dimensions
- 62 x 50 cm
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Location
- National Gallery, London, United Kingdom
This painting shows a live rhinoceros in a wooden pen, calmly eating hay, while a group of Venetians in carnival costume watch it from a little balcony. Some wear the white bauta masks and black tricorn hats of the Venetian carnival, and a keeper holds up the animal's horn and a whip.
A closer look
The rhinoceros was Clara, a female Indian rhinoceros who toured Europe for seventeen years with her Dutch owner, Douwemout van der Meer, and became a celebrity, inspiring prints, poems, porcelain and even hairstyles. In 1751 she was exhibited at the Venice carnival. Longhi, known for his small, gently ironic scenes of Venetian society, records the event with a mixture of curiosity and humour: the masked spectators seem as strange as the animal. The keeper holds Clara's horn, which she had rubbed off against her enclosure, a detail noted in the inscription.