Doorway of the Doges', Venice
Medium
Etching in black on cream laid paper
Dimensions
Image/plate: 39.4 × 19.7 cm (15 9/16 × 7 13/16 in.); Sheet: 39.8 × 20 cm (15 11/16 × 7 7/8 in.)
Classification
etching
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
11668
Art Historical Context
Step through the intricate stone archway captured in Donald Shaw MacLaughlan's *Doorway of the Doges', Venice* (1909), an exquisite etching that transports visitors to the heart of Venice's Gothic splendor. MacLaughlan, a masterful Canadian-American printmaker active during the etching revival of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, specialized in evocative depictions of European architecture. Here, he immortalizes the grand entrance to the Doges' Palace—once the opulent seat of Venice's ruling doges—its carved details and shadowed recesses evoking the city's layered history of power, trade...
About the Artist
Donald Shaw MacLaughlan
Donald Shaw MacLaughlan (1876–1938) was born on November 9 in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Canada, though he is recognized as an American artist after his family relocated to Boston, Massachusetts, in 1890. There, as a teenager, he immersed himself in the Boston Public Library's collections of old master prints, studying works by Albrecht Dürer, Rembrandt van Rijn, and eighteenth-century E...