Pietro Longhi’s depictions of Venetian life carried witty symbolic meaning for contemporary viewers. Here an adolescent girl, ready for her singing lesson, sits between a violinist and a harpsichordist. The figure at right, most likely her music teacher, seems to give us a knowing look. Two animals—a caged bird and a little dog—provide amorous subtext, alluding, respectively, to the young woman’s virginity and the harpsichordist’s erotic interest in her. Eighteenth-century Venice was a city of music; the harpsichordist has sometimes been identified as Farinelli, a famous castrato, that is, a male singer who endured castration to retain his high notes.