The Tickle

Longhi's Rococo sensibility is perhaps nowhere more clearly expressed than in this 1755 scene of playful physical contact between figures in an elegant interior. The tickle as a subject hovers between the decorous and the licentious, the game's intimacy carefully calibrated to remain within the bounds of what could be depicted without scandal while still communicating the charged social atmosphere of Rococo leisure. The Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum's collection includes several works of European Rococo genre painting that provide context for understanding how Longhi's Venetian subjects relate to contemporaneous French and German treatments of similar themes. Play, touching, and intimate contact were central concerns of Rococo art across Europe.

Longhi manages the technical challenge of depicting motion — the act of tickling — through gestural shorthand that implies movement without blurring form. The figures' costumes provide a rich surface of silk and lace that catches light differently as it falls across the dynamic composition.