Monet resisted painting one of the most paintable cities in the world for years. When he finally gave in, at 68 years old, he found something worth the wait.
What you're looking at
Monet painted this view of the Palazzo Dario along Venice's Grand Canal in 1908, the marble facade dissolving into soft, shimmering color, a single gondola drifting quietly in front of it. Monet worked from inside a covered gondola, using it as a kind of floating studio anchored on the water itself.
Reluctant to visit, then completely won over
Monet had been reluctant to travel to Venice and paint there, largely because the city was already so heavily depicted across the art market that he worried there was nothing genuinely new for him to capture. When he was finally persuaded to make the trip in 1908, he found himself unexpectedly inspired by the specific quality of Venetian color and atmosphere, and he began 37 canvases during that single visit, his only trip to the city.
He deliberately cropped out the palace's upper floors in this composition, leaving only a narrow strip of sky, letting the marble facade and its shimmering reflection dominate almost the entire canvas. Conservators have found an earlier signature beneath the visible one, suggesting Monet reworked this particular canvas again years after his original Venice trip. It's now held by the Art Institute of Chicago.
One detail to look for
Look at where the marble palace meets the water. Monet paints the wall's reflection as loosely as the solid stone above it, letting the two nearly merge into one continuous field of color.
See it at its real size
Our canvas print is labeled against the true size of the original, 66.2 x 81.8 cm. Shop the canvas print.