Venice pushes up Monet’s prices: in its first appearance at auctions, a 1908 view of the Grand Canal and Santa Maria della Salute sold for 56.6 million dollars (at Sotheby’s in New York), thus becoming the Venetian view highest paid artist at an auction. And, more generally, the most expensive Italian view ever auctioned.
The masterpiece joins a long line of Monet paintings that have sold for over $ 50 million. The artist spent three months in Venice in 1908. Many of the paintings from this period, painted from the steps of Palazzo Barbaro where Monet and his wife Alice stayed for the first two weeks in the city, are kept in prestigious museums, including the Museum of Fine Arts of Boston and the Fine Art Museums of San Francisco. That trip was very fruitful. Monet painted 37 paintings that masterfully capture the incomparable magic of Venetian views.
The previous record for a Venetian Monet was 36.5 million dollars, a view of the Doge’s Palace sold by Sotheby’s in 2019. For an Italian view, the record was a Roman Turner from Mount Aventine, also beaten by Sotheby’s in London for 47.6 million dollars in 2014.