Mondnacht am Bosporus

Of the roughly 6,000 pictures Aivazovsky painted across his long life, more than 200 were of one city, the Ottoman capital he knew as Constantinople and we now call Istanbul. He said that outside Russia it was the place he loved most. This is one of them, done in 1894, looking along the Bosphorus by moonlight with the dome and minarets of the Ortakoy mosque rising on the shore. He built the whole effect from a single skill he had perfected over decades, the glow of the moon laid on in thin glazes so the light seems to pass through the paint rather than sit on top of it. Small boats and a crowded quay stand dark against that shine on the water.