Made for the Homo Faber biennial in Venice. Monet arrived in the city with his wife in autumn 1908 and at first declared it “too beautiful to paint”; he then chose a dozen sites and painted each repeatedly at different hours to catch the changing light. The challenge here was reducing canvases over 65 × 92 cm onto a surface of 25 × 20 mm, while faking the impasto of the original brushwork so the miniature keeps its depth. The San Giorgio miniature alone took roughly 70 hours. Each dial beneath is hand-guilloché — about eight hours of work — under translucent coloured enamel.
Sources: SJX · Fratello · JLC — San Giorgio Maggiore · JLC — The Grand Canal · JLC — The Doge’s Palace
Click any piece to turn it over
The island opposite St Mark’s Square, painted as the sun set behind it. Monet reduces the buildings almost to silhouette and gives the picture over to light, colour and reflection. The miniaturised reproduction required roughly 70 hours of work.
The view down the Grand Canal past the mooring poles toward Santa Maria della Salute — one of the sites Monet returned to again and again at different hours.
The palace seen from the water, its Gothic arcades dissolving into the lagoon’s reflected light.