Easels in the Sacristy

John Singer Sargent, Pavement of St. Mark's, 1898

In late-nineteenth-century Venice, worshippers and tourists had to share St. Mark's cathedral with painters. According to artist and ambassador Maitland Armstrong, the artists were given an honored place:

"In San Marco the artists were privileged; we could sit and paint wherever we pleased, no one ever interfering with us; we were allowed to store our easels and canvases in the sacristy—there were so many of them that it looked more like a studio than the robing-room of a church... Never was there a more delightful place to work in."

----

Quote from Day Before Yesterday: Reminiscences of a Varied Life by Maitland Armstrong, 1920

Painting reproduced in The Lure of Italy: American Artists and the Italian Experience, 1760-1914