The Doge's Palace Seen from San Giorgio Maggiore

Claude Monet · 1908

Across the wide water of the Bacino di San Marco, the Doge's Palace floats in Venetian light. Monet spent only a short time in Venice in late 1908, and finished this view and its sisters from memory back in France.

The story behind the painting

Monet painted this view during his visit to Venice in late 1908. He went home to France with many canvases still incomplete and spent a few years preparing 29 works for exhibition. In 1912 he held a successful show, Claude Monet Venise, at the Bernheim-Jeune gallery in Paris. This picture is one of six versions of the same scene he painted in 1908, catalogued W1751 to W1756 in the Wildenstein catalogue raisonné; this one is W1755. Other versions are held by the Kunsthaus Zürich and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.

What to look for

The canvas, oil, measures 25 3/4 by 36 1/2 inches, about 65.4 by 92.7 cm. It shows the Doge's Palace, an icon of Venice and the historic seat of government of the Venetian Republic, together with the buildings of the Riva degli Schiavoni waterfront. Monet looked from the island of San Giorgio Maggiore across the Bacino di San Marco, choosing a viewpoint at the edge of the piazza in front of Palladio's famous abbey church.

Meaning and intent

Six versions were made to capture the changing light at different times of day. This kind of series painting went back to Monet's early career, when he and the other Impressionists turned to painting outdoors, en plein air, inspired by the shifting effects of light. By 1908 his style was long established, and Venice became one more place to watch a single motif change from hour to hour. The source speaks of the influence of the effervescent Venetian sunset on these works, so the subject is less the palace than the light passing over it.

Legacy

Opinions differ, and the source records both. One passage says this work is considered less successful because Monet spent so little time in Venice and had to finish the series from memory in Paris. Another says that the works he began in Venice, The Doge's Palace among them, are some of his most highly regarded, capturing his signature style. After the 1912 exhibition in Paris the painting travelled the world before finding its permanent home at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.