Longhena, Baldassare

LONGHENA, BALDASSARE. - Architect, b. in Venice in 1598 to a Ticinese family (from Maroggia on Lake Lugano), d. there on 18 February 1682. He soon abandoned sculpture, in which he had been trained by his father and of which the cenotaph of Bishop Gabriele Severo in S. Giorgio dei Greci (1619) is a modest example, in order to devote himself exclusively to architecture.

The first work whose date is certainly known is his masterpiece: the basilica of S. Maria della Salute (begun in 1630 and not yet completed at his death), a most ingenious transformation of the Renaissance theme of the centrally planned church into the characteristics of Venetian pictorialism. The subsequent works do not attain such a height of stylistic coherence. The Palladian reminiscences, already evident in the facade and interior of the Salute, are even more alive in the interior of the cathedral of Chioggia (1633); whereas in the facades of S. Giustina (1640) and S. Tomà (1652), both reworked in the 18th century, and in the interior of S. Maria del Pianto (1647) the Sansovinian taste is alive. The emphatic superimposition of ornaments which in the later works (interior of S. Maria degli Scalzi, 1660; facade of the Ospedaletto, 1674) seems almost to accept the heavy decorative taste of the Lombard Baroque, reaches its most exaggerated expression in the sepulchral monument of Doge Giov. Pesaro in the Frari (1669).

In civil buildings L. is faithful to Sansovinian models, from the earliest works (Palazzi Giustinian Lolin at the Accademia, Widman at S. Canciano, etc.) to the later and more significant ones, such as the Palazzo Pesaro (begun in 1676), perhaps the most imposing expression of Venetian Baroque, and the Palazzo Rezzonico (1680), completed much later by Massari.

Mario Zocca