Venice: View of the Canal Grande and Santa Maria della Salute from the Ponte della Carità (Moonlight Effect), ca. 1870

About the Work

The mysterious aura of the “Floating City” in the silvery light of the moon had already been discovered in painting. The painter Friedrich Nerly, for example, had made a name for himself with nocturnal views of Venice. In the photography medium, it was Carlo Naya who specialized in this area. He had to go to tremendous pains, however, to achieve comparable effects. He shot the buildings and the cloudy sky separately during the day, strongly underexposing the film, and then assembled the negatives. When the print was developed on bluish prepared photo paper, the lighter zones took on the appearance of reflected moonlight. The scenes were extremely popular with tourists because they intensified the myth of Venice conveyed by romantic literature—as a place of intrigues and secret love affairs. Naya and Nerly were acquainted, and the photographer reproduced the works of the painter from 1865 onwards.