Le Grand Canal et Santa Maria della Salute

Le Grand Canal et Santa Maria della Salute (Wildenstein 1740) is Claude Monet's sunlit view down the Grand Canal to the domed church of Santa Maria della Salute, painted in Venice in 1908. In May 2022, on its first appearance at auction, it sold at Sotheby's New York for $56.6 million, the highest price ever paid for a Monet view of Venice. It is in a private collection.

What you're looking at

Baldassare Longhena's great church rises in the upper middle of the canvas, its main dome a swelling shape of white and lilac, the smaller dome and lantern to the right, the scrolled volutes below suggested in a few pale curves. To the right, the long buildings of the Dogana and the Dorsoduro waterfront stretch off in lilac, pink and gold, catching sun. The sky is a fresh turquoise and green, brighter than in most of the Venice pictures.

What sets this version apart is its foreground. On the left, a cluster of tall mooring poles (pali) rises out of the water, striped in orange, red and blue, and one great pole stands just left of center, cutting the canvas from top to bottom like a stage flat. At the very lower left, a flight of stone steps runs down into the water, painted in warm cream and pink with blue shadows: the landing of a palace on the canal. Between the steps and the church, a single gondola with its rower floats on water broken into dashes of turquoise, green, gold and rose.

The signature and date, Claude Monet 1908, are at the lower right.

Where Monet stood

Monet and his wife Alice arrived in Venice in early October 1908, invited by Mary Young Hunter, who had taken the Palazzo Barbaro on the Grand Canal. The Barbaro stands a short way up the canal from the Salute, and the Grand Canal views with poles in the foreground are generally said to have been painted from its water steps; this one includes the steps themselves. Later the couple moved to the Hotel Britannia, and they left in early December. Monet finished the canvases at Giverny, and twenty-nine Venice paintings were shown at Bernheim-Jeune in 1912.

How this version differs

Monet painted the Salute across the Grand Canal several times. In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston Grand Canal, the church and poles float in violet haze. The versions in San Francisco, The Grand Canal, Venice, and in the Nahmad collection, The Grand Canal, Venice (1908), vary the spacing of the poles and the weather. This canvas is the sunniest and most architectural: the steps give a solid foothold, the colors are fresh and saturated, and the striped poles add strong verticals of orange and blue. The sharp contrast between the near, hard-edged pole and the soft, distant domes makes the depth of the canal palpable.

How it was painted

The poles are each laid in with a few long, loaded strokes, red and orange on the sunlit side and blue in shadow. The church is built from softer, drier touches of white, lilac and yellow. The water is a mosaic of short horizontal strokes, the colors kept separate so they vibrate at a distance. The steps are painted in thick diagonal bands, the warmest passage in the picture.

Sale and where to see it

The painting was offered in Sotheby's Modern Evening Auction in New York on 17 May 2022, with an estimate in the region of $50 million, and sold for $56.6 million with fees. That broke the previous record for a Monet Venice view, set by a Palais Ducal at Sotheby's London in 2019. The buyer was not named. To see Monet's Grand Canal in a museum, visit the MFA Boston or the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. For the full group see Monet in Venice, and for Monet worldwide, Where to See Monet's Paintings.