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Venice: Saint Mark's Looking toward San Giorgio Maggiore, in Moonlight
by Carlo Naya
Also known as: Venice: St. Mark's Looking Towards San Giorgio Maggiore, in Moonlight
About the Artwork
This romantic view of a nearly empty, moonlit Piazza San Marco is a tourist’s dream of Venice—and dream it is, rather than reality. The light-sensitive coatings of photographic negatives around 1870 were unable to record such detail in the dark, so Carlo Naya photographed his celebrated nocturnes during the day then manipulated the exposure in the darkroom. The highlights on the water and on the columns on the right, along with all the gaslight flames, were hand painted on the negative (he missed one lamp on the left). The sun, conveniently hidden behind a cloud, becomes the moon.
Provenance
Bruno Tartarin, Paris; Charles Isaacs, New York; Cleveland Museum of Art
Exhibition history
Stories from Storage. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (February 7-May 16, 2021).
Quick Overview
- Artist
- Carlo Naya (Italian, 1816–1882)
- Date
- c. 1870
- Medium
- albumen print
- Dimensions
- Image: 42.3 x 53.7 cm (16 5/8 x 21 1/8 in.); Paper: 42.3 x 53.7 cm (16 5/8 x 21 1/8 in.); Matted: 61 x 76.2 cm (24 x 30 in.)
- Type
- Photograph
- Classification
- Photograph
- Department
- Photography
- Credit line
- Dudley P. Allen Fund
- Accession no.
- 2009.350
More by Carlo Naya in museum collections
Data retrieved from the Cleveland Museum of Art on October 7, 2026. The museum may have updated its record since.
Open-access museum record · AT-00000377
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