1840, J.M.W. Turner, Venice, the Bridge of Sighs -- Tate Britain (London)
From the museum label:
Turner painted Venice on smaller canvases with a new kind of customer in mind — the middle-classes. Many of them holidayed in Venice, inspired by Romantic poet Byron, who had lived there. He had written movingly of how this once-splendid republic had lost its independence — taken over by Napoleon in 1797 and then Austria in 1815.
This glittering painting shows one of Venice's most famous sights, the Bridge of Sighs, between the Doge's Palace and the city's prison. Turner exhibited it with lines adapted from Byron: 'I stood upon a bridge, a palace and / A prison on each hand'.
1840, J.M.W. Turner, Venice, the Bridge of Sighs -- Tate Britain (London)
From the museum label:
Turner painted Venice on smaller canvases with a new kind of customer in mind — the middle-classes. Many of them holidayed in Venice, inspired by Romantic poet Byron, who had lived there. He had written movingly of how this once-splendid republic had lost its independence — taken over by Napoleon in 1797 and then Austria in 1815.
This glittering painting shows one of Venice's most famous sights, the Bridge of Sighs, between the Doge's Palace and the city's prison. Turner exhibited it with lines adapted from Byron: 'I stood upon a bridge, a palace and / A prison on each hand'.