The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of April 20, 2024

Venice: Saint Mark's Looking toward San Giorgio Maggiore, in Moonlight

Venice: Saint Mark's Looking toward San Giorgio Maggiore, in Moonlight

c. 1870
(Italian, 1816–1882)
Italy, 19th century
albumen print
Image: 42.3 x 53.7 cm (16 5/8 x 21 1/8 in.); Paper: 42.3 x 53.7 cm (16 5/8 x 21 1/8 in.); Matted: 61 x 76.2 cm (24 x 30 in.)
Dudley P. Allen Fund 2009.350
Location: not on view

Did You Know?

Nowadays Venice usually receives between 26 and 30 million visitors annually.

Description

This romantic view of a nearly empty, moonlit Piazza San Marco is a tourist’s dream of Venice—and dream it is, rather than reality. The light-sensitive coatings of photographic negatives around 1870 were unable to record such detail in the dark, so Carlo Naya photographed his celebrated nocturnes during the day then manipulated the exposure in the darkroom. The highlights on the water and on the columns on the right, along with all the gaslight flames, were hand painted on the negative (he missed one lamp on the left). The sun, conveniently hidden behind a cloud, becomes the moon.
  • Bruno Tartarin, Paris; Charles Isaacs, New York; Cleveland Museum of Art
  • Chiodini, Elisabetta. Il mito di Venezia: da Hayez alla Biennale. Novara : METS percorsi d'arte, 2021. Mentioned and reproduced: p. 63, fig. 8
    Tannenbaum, Barbara. “Paper Airplanes.” Cleveland Art: Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine 61, no. 1 (Winter 2021): 22. Reproduced and Mentioned: P. 22.
  • Stories From Storage. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (February 7-May 16, 2021).
  • {{cite web|title=Venice: Saint Mark's Looking toward San Giorgio Maggiore, in Moonlight|url=false|author=Carlo Naya|year=c. 1870|access-date=20 April 2024|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/2009.350