Gezicht op Venetië 1794 - 1837

Caroline Lose made this print of Venice sometime before her death in 1837. She created a grid of twelve vedute, or ‘views’, of the city that captured the architectural character of Venice. Lose was working in the wake of Canaletto and other, mostly male, artists who made a profession out of depicting Venice. But Lose was not Venetian: she was working within a northern European tradition of traveling to Italy and recording its wonders for those who could not make the journey. Publishing houses circulated these images, catering to a growing tourist industry that turned Venice into a cultural commodity. The images create meaning through well-established visual codes and cultural references: Lose’s views are recognizable because they are faithful to established viewpoints and motifs. To understand this print better, we can consult travel guides and histories of Venice that would have shaped Lose's choices. What does it mean to represent a city in this way? This is a question of cultural and institutional history.