Despite being the son of the highly successful genre painter Pietro Longhi, Alessandro enjoyed his own artistic repute by specialising in portraiture. He was apprenticed as a young man to Giuseppe Nogari, one of the better-known Venetian portraitists of the 18th century, but Alessandro's portraits have more in common with his father's pictorial style; so much so that their attribution has often been confused in the past. In 1759 Alessandro was elected a member of the Accademia di Pittori, for which he painted a series of imaginary portraits of the great Venetian Re𝕴naissance artists.

Though much of his output consists of 'official' portraits of Venetian senators and lawyers, his informal portraits - such as this one - demonstrate his sensitivity in portraying the Venetian aristocracy. The female sitter's lively expression and the little boy's gesture are convincingly captured💖 through Alessandro's painterly brushwork.