he Grand Canal from the Gritti Palace
30 March 2016
Venice, Italy
Seven friends from Traverse City are exploring Venice together this week. Last Sunday, Easter, we all piled into a low-slung water taxi to cross the lagoon to San Giorgio Maggiore to hear the Gregorian chants. As we approached the island, fog filmed the watery passage, and inside the fog, the bells were ringing and ringing. Monica says on the 25th of March 421 AD an angel told St. Mark the Evangelist to build Venice here in the Lagoon. This day, some of us are off shopping for leather gloves, others are at museums, and Barb and I are having lunch at the Gritti Palace enjoying the dozens of passing boats. It’s a marvel they don’t crash. The man on the left in this painting is steering a thirty-foot-long barge with his arm over a tiller. We could hand him a dinner roll he’s so close. He took a sharp left into a very narrow water alley. Our lunch of baby artichokes has been taken away and we’re sitting in the sun, chatting while I paint.
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© Leslie Lee • leestudiotc.com