San Giorgio Maggiore

Claude Monet painted this view of Venice in 1908, during a trip he took with his wife Alice when he was already in his late sixties. The subject is the church of San Giorgio Maggiore, a famous landmark sitting on its own little island across the water from St. Mark's Square. Monet wasn't really interested in the building's architecture, though. What caught his eye was the way light bounced off the lagoon and softened everything into a haze of pinks, blues, and purples. The church almost seems to float, half-dissolved in the glowing air.

You can see the loose, dabbing brushstrokes that made Monet one of the leaders of Impressionism, the style that focused on capturing a fleeting moment rather than sharp detail. A lone gondola drifts across the calm water, adding a quiet sense of place. Monet fell in love with Venice on this visit and worked on dozens of canvases, often returning to the same spots at different times of day to chase the changing light. He finished many of these paintings back home in France from memory and notes, which says a lot about how deeply the city stayed with him.