An Artist in Venice. Adam Van Doren

of its great sinuous waterway spread out like some vast tableau, a private theatrical performance laid on just for me. There to the right was the immense, three-tiered Rezzonico mansion, no more than a few hundred yards away; the Accademia bridge was a little further down, and if I strained hard and leaned out over the water I could see the Rialto, too, a few hundred yards to the left.

      There was a strange insistence about these cool waters, lapping as they did right into the heart of the very house where I was staying. You must venture out, they seemed to say. There was a small landing stage, and by chance a gondola was tying up to the striped pole at one end, and by even greater chance there came a sudden cry of welcome from within it – a friend of mine who lay on a cushion near the prow was waving to me, frantically. It wasn’t a total coincidence. She knew where I would be staying and had come to meet me, to take me for an evening drink.

      I mentioned earlier that I had two pieces of paper with me. The first was the one I had given to the taxi, and which led me to this exquisite miniature palazzo where I was now staying. The second, which I dug from my shirt pocket, was an introduction written from a mutual friend in London – a please be kind to this man letter, written to Arrigo Cipriani, the man who at the time ran no less a watering hole than – of course – Harry’s Bar.

      And this, without the slightest protest from my lady-in-the-gondola, was then where we promptly went. And which is why, as the sun went down on that first Venice evening, there we were: two old friends, sitting beside the tiny tinted windows of the bar, gazing out in a quiet rapture and sipping as we did so, and inevitably, pair after pair of fresh-made Bellinis. We were captivated: by the old palaces and warehouses of Giudecca out on the blue horizon, by the enormous white marble dome of the Basilica Salute just across the canal from us, by all the rest of the irresistible magic of Venice, which was laid out glowing and drowning in that evening’s warmth, on every side.

      Serene, eternal, perfect. Venice was at that moment for us what it has become for most who are fortunate enough to be able to stay there for a while, who are lucky enough to be able to drink it all in. Venice, the perfect stage set for an ever-unfolding dream, a place that after that inauspicious moment on the Milan Express became as I had long imagined – place of treasure, of secrets, and the embalming comforts of memory.

      And a place whose tincture is all captured, so perfectly, in the lush score of the pages of Van Doren’s Venice that follow.

      The Bridge of Sighs, 2008

      San Giorgio at Night, 2008. Private Collection

      “Venice still lingered on my mind when I arrived at the design studio …”

      A WORLD AWAY

      If you read a lot, nothing is as great as you’ve imagined. Venice is – Venice is better.

      – Fran Lebowitz¹

      The winter of 1986 was barren and cheerless. Gray clouds scudded overhead, overshadowing the Columbia University campus like squat, menacing gulls. Students were holed up in dorms, huddled next to radiators. Finals loomed. Claustrophobia pressed in. I was trapped.

      That December, wandering the depths of the architecture school, numb from a recent all-night charette study session, I noticed a brochure in the library announcing a summer program in Venice. The seductive cover showed a glossy photograph of the Salute church on the Grand Canal. All inquiries to be made to Prof. Luigi Butera. References necessary. I read the fine print. Applicants to be selected based on an aptitude for drawing. Space is limited. Despite the prerequisites, I thought my chances were good. Drawing was something I’d done for years, and Venice was a city I knew well. I jotted down the number for Professor Butera – suddenly the most significant person in my life – and determined that a summer abroad would be the perfect escape. But before I could seriously contemplate absconding to Europe, I had to satisfy my more immediate coursework: I needed to pass my semester review, which was only hours away.

      Venice still lingered on my mind when I arrived at the design studio after lunch. Most of my fellow students were already there. They looked catatonic; some hadn’t slept in days. The professors were silent as I nervously pinned up my elevations, rendered in pencil and watercolor. They deliberated for what seemed an eternity. When they finally spoke, I heard the words “painterly” and “inspired” – no faint praise from an architecture jury. That afternoon I scrounged around for Professor Butera’s address and submitted my application. The sky seemed suddenly brighter, and I could breathe again. Elated and relieved, I was already sipping espresso in Piazza San Marco.

      Lying awake in my dorm that evening, I pondered the possibilities. I thought of the expatriates who once lived there – Whistler, Stravinsky, Pound, Sargent, Browning, James, Byron, Brodsky – cultural luminaries in music, literature, and painting. The list was long. I felt presumptuous comparing my unfledged aptitudes to theirs. Unable to fall asleep, I got out of bed and stared out my window. I envisioned for a moment that the quadrangle below, outside Butler Library, was Piazza San Marco, and wondered if Venice would lead to anything significant – or if I was just being self-indulgent. Shouldn’t I be looking for a job? My drawings for that day’s presentation still lay sprawled on the floor. I looked at them again closely. In truth, I derived my greatest satisfaction from their use of watercolor – greater than any actual architectural problem I’d solved. I cared less about the requisite number of emergency exits and more about the quality of my rendering: the choice of colors, the shade and shadow. My years of art classes seemed finally to have paid off. Starting to droop, I closed my eyes and turned in.

      Six months later I landed at Venice’s Marco Polo airport, accepted into the program. Boarding the vaporetto for my hotel, I started to plan my itinerary: the Palazzo Ca’ Dario, with its colorful Renaissance façade; the Frari Church, which has a famous painting by Titian; and Campo Giovanni e Paolo, known for its equestrian statue of Bartolomeo Colleoni. My fingers itched; I couldn’t wait to start sketching. But where to begin? It hardly mattered. In time, it would all make sense: I had decided to become a painter, not an architect – and Venice was responsible.

      San Giorgio, 2009, by Susan Ennis

      Palazzi, 2009. Collection of Mary Burnham

      “Like an unfurled Chinese scroll, the façades stretch end-to-end.”

      HEAVENLY MANSIONS

      Its temples and its palaces did seem like fabrics of enchantment piled to heaven.

      – Percy Bysshe Shelley²

      Idon’t know what civilization is,” the eminent art historian Sir Kenneth Clark famously remarked, while looking at the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, “but I do know that I am standing in front of it.”³ The same could be said of the Ca’ d’Oro in Venice, and there is no mystery why. It is a great building, not merely an excellent example of High Gothic – it would be beautiful in any style – but also because its proportions are perfect. Once the home of the