Excerpts from the book “La Serenissima”

At the occasion of the 450th anniversary of Titian’s and the 100th anniversary of Claude Monet’s death, this book is dedicated to the theme of “Beauty and Transience”. The contributions other Venice-loving artists with important anniversaries in 2026 have made to modernity (Turner, Vivaldi, and Richard Wagner) is also honored in its pages. While Venice has never been destroyed, it nevertheless embodies the continuity of transience. William Turner and Claude Monet loved visiting the city to depict its melancholy beauty. Monet’s last trip before dedicating himself to his almost abstract late water lily works, had also taken him to Venice. The revolution of landscape in art, however, first occurred during the Renaissance.