Veneza vista da Giudecca

When Turner painted this in 1840, Venice was a faded city under Austrian rule, its long life as an independent republic already over. None of that weighs on the picture. He looks across the water from the island of Giudecca toward the white dome of Santa Maria della Salute, and lets the whole city melt into light and haze until the buildings are barely more than suggestions on the lagoon. He showed it at the Royal Academy that summer as a companion to another Venetian view. Turner was in his sixties and had visited the city only briefly, years earlier, working much of this up from memory and old sketches.