45.4372°N / 12.3346°E · Italy
Almost no street is straight, and a single great line of water holds the whole city. The Grand Canal describes a reversed S of three point eight kilometres that cuts the fabric in two and gives the sheet all its legibility.
You choose the framing, the palette and the words of the caption. The work is drawn from real data, then printed to order in the workshop closest to you.
Around the canal, the built fabric forms an extremely dense paste, pierced by narrow canals and alleys that follow no grid. Two exceptions show plainly: Via Garibaldi, a rio terà of about three hundred and fifty metres opened in 1807 by decree of Napoleon, and Strada Nova, cut through Cannaregio by filling rios and demolishing houses, inaugurated on 2 September 1871. They are the only two straight lines born of a decision.
Two geometric figures contradict the disorder, and they are the ones to get right: to the south, the Giudecca canal, wide and straight, detaches a band of islands from the rest of the city; to the east, the walled rectangle of the Arsenal. To the west, two parallel works laid on the water link the archipelago to the mainland. And all around lies the lagoon, which is almost not open water at all: about eight per cent emerged land, eleven per cent open water and channels, and nearly eighty per cent mudflats, shallows and salt marsh. It is the largest wetland in the Mediterranean basin.
Warm, close values and low contrast: pink brick, washed ochre render, white Istrian stone for the bridges and quays, and a grey green water that must on no account turn blue. In Venice water and stone hold almost the same value, and it is the drawing of the canals, not the colour, that has to carry the sheet.
The historic centre is wider than it is tall, and the S of the Grand Canal unfolds from west to east: it has to be held whole, from Santa Lucia station to St Mark’s basin, with the Giudecca canal at the bottom of the frame and the Arsenal to the right. Cutting either loop of the S destroys the figure. The opening frame therefore steps back a notch rather than tightening on the fabric, and what you gain is the lagoon all around, and so the situation of the city. One point of vocabulary: the commune of Venice includes the mainland, the historic centre is the archipelago. They are not the same map.
The title, a line beneath it, the coordinates. The name of a sestiere, a date, the name of a bridge: that line is what turns a plan of Venice into your plan of Venice.
Sixteen inks, in the configurator’s order. It is not in the catalogue, but you will find it in the palette library, filed under its material.
Opens the colour workshop with these 16 inks in place: change one, keep the rest.
It will wait in your account, ready for any piece.
The Grand Canal describes a reversed S through the central sestieri. It is three point eight kilometres long, thirty to ninety metres wide, five metres deep on average, and comes out at one end into the lagoon near Santa Lucia station and at the other into St Mark’s basin. Only four bridges cross it: the Rialto, for a long time the only one, then the Scalzi, the Accademia, and the Constitution bridge completed in 2008.
The Arsenal covers about forty-five hectares, close to fifteen per cent of the surface of Venice, behind a wall of some three point two kilometres that kept it out of sight. By the end of the fifteenth century it was the largest industrial complex in the world: some sixteen thousand workers at its height, and the capacity to turn out nearly a ship a day. On the map it is the one shape you could draw with a ruler.
The link to the mainland is double, and recent on the city’s scale: a rail viaduct built in 1846, still in service with two tracks each way, then the road bridge of three thousand eight hundred and fifty metres, designed in 1932 by the engineer Eugenio Miozzi and opened in 1933. The latter is the only car access to the historic centre, and it stops at Piazzale Roma. That double straight line says the essential about where the city stands.
Yes. The search covers the whole world, from a capital to a hamlet. For the Sky collection, any date works, past or future: the sky is calculated.
From 21 × 29.7 cm to 84.1 × 118.9 cm, that is A4 to A0, portrait or landscape depending on the material. Every size is shown with its price in the editor.
Four, from the barest to the most dressed.
Allow 1 to 4 working days for making, up to 7 for hand-assembled frames and canvases, then 1 to 6 working days in transit with standard delivery.
Digital editions are available immediately: the file of your piece is emailed to you as soon as you order.
The bridge you crossed without counting it, the alley that leads nowhere, the quay where the water rose. The S is the same for everyone. What you keep around it is not.
Compose my Venice poster
