Morning in Venice

Prominent French landscape artist Camille Corot worked in Barbizon for a while in the middle of the 19th century, but his work was quite different from the aspirations of the Barbizon school artists. At the start of his creative journey, he traveled to Italy, where he created his painting Morning in Venice. Corot depicted a person disappearing into the front of Doge’s Palace and the library building of Sansovino. In the distance, the Santa Maria della Salute church can be seen against an azure sky. In the observed motif, Corot captures not the architectural landmarks so much as the momentary nature and the uniqueness of the situation: the morning sky, long shadows coming from the figures of the few passersby on the waterfront, splashes of light on the church dome and the library colonnade. Corot’s lyricism is achieved in the freshness and tenderness of experiencing what is seen.