Early Morning at St Mark's Square

Title:​ Early Morning at St Mark's Square —2024 Le Venezie International Watercolor Festival Overall Second Prize ($800)

Artist:​ Ina Xi 

Dimensions:​ 38 × 28 cm

Year:​ 2024

Medium:​ Transparent Watercolor

About the Artist

Ina Xi is a femous watercolor artist with a refined sensitivity to light, space, and architectural atmosphere. Early Morning at St Mark's Square captures one of Venice's most iconic settings at its most elusive hour — before the crowds arrive, when the great piazza belongs to silence, mist, and the first pale wash of dawn light across ancient stone. In choosing this subject, Ina Xi enters into a long and distinguished tradition of artists drawn to Venice's singular quality of light, from Turner to Sargent, while bringing to it a distinctly Eastern economy of means. The intimacy of the work's scale — just 38 by 28 centimeters — only deepens its power, concentrating the grandeur of the square into something felt close and personal, as though the viewer alone has wandered into that still, luminous morning.