Santa Maria della Salute, Venice

Santa Maria della Salute, Venice from around 1830 by David Roberts depicts Longhena's magnificent Baroque church dominating the entrance to the Grand Canal. Venice was among Roberts's most productive subjects, and this votive church—built as thanksgiving for deliverance from plague in 1631—offered an architectural spectacle perfectly suited to his combination of topographic precision and Romantic atmosphere. Roberts spent time in Venice making careful studies of the city's major monuments, recording the play of Adriatic light on stone and water with a sensitivity informed by his training as a scene painter. The painting, now at The Atkinson, captures the church from the waterside, its great dome and flanking towers reflected in the lagoon, combining the documentary impulse of Romantic travel with genuine pictorial elegance.

The domed church is rendered with Roberts's precise architectural technique, the Venetian water and light adding atmospheric richness to the architectural subject.