Pietro Longhi, 'A Nobleman kissing a Lady's Hand', about 1746

We are looking into a refined room, its wall adorned with paintings in gilded frames and its door obscured by a heavy green curtain. A man in a black robe and white wig, perhaps a Venetian nobleman, bows to a young girl, whose elegant white dress stands out against the vivid green patterned damask. He is about to kiss her hand.

Pietro Longhi has given this scene a sense of intrigue with the male servant who waits patiently to serve a drink and the woman who lingers beside the girl – perhaps her mother. She holds an offering of a pink flower, perhaps symbolising the girl’s beauty or purity.

During the 1730s and 1740s Longhi specialised in capturing the lives and customs of wealthy Venetians, as in A Lady Receiving a Cavalier and An Interior with Three Women and a Seated Man, and often included amorous or comical undertones.