Byron's visit to the Mekhitarists in Surb Ghazar Island

In the winter of 1816, Lord Byron rowed most days across the Venice lagoon to a small island monastery, San Lazzaro, where Armenian Catholic monks, the Mekhitarists, had kept a library and printing press since the early 1700s. Byron sat with them to study Armenian, wanting, as he wrote, something difficult to break his mind upon, and he helped them prepare an Armenian grammar in English. Aivazovsky painted that visit more than 80 years later, in 1899, and he had his own stake in it: he was Armenian, born Hovhannes Aivazian in Feodosia on the Black Sea. Here the poet stands on a red carpet at the water's edge, greeted by the monks, the domes and towers of Venice softened in haze behind them. It was among the last things Aivazovsky made. He died the next year, at 82, still painting the sea he had painted all his life.