By Luciano Migliaccio
Frédéric Chopin defined Ziem’s talent thus: “Every artist has an ideal homeland, which is usually situated far from his/her native land. Ziem’s homeland is Venice. This is where his painting has established its official domicile. He takes a drop of water to dissolve color and composes a house of golden crepe. But that which he renders even better is the lagoon water, the surface of which is built with thousands of scales of light, reflecting the whimsical sky in the wake of the gondolas and their oars cutting through the reflected images of the silhouettes of the palace.” Chopin’s words indicate the cultural environment in which Ziem’s output was inscribed – characterized by a vision of art as an expression of individual feeling and the similarity between painting, music, and poetry as mirrors of a single inner vision. Chopin’s virtuoso talent and Byron’s epic tension resulting from his fascination with the East found a parallel in the Ziem’s landscapes, where the artist dissolved optical form and investigated the psychological values of color and composition. The Masp canvas The Canal Grande at Venice was painted in the last phase of the artist.

— Luciano Migliaccio, 1998

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