Giulia Zaniol has an MA in Printmaking from Camberwell School of Art (2005/6) and in October 2006 she was the winner of the prestigious Clifford Chance Purchase Prize for Postgraduate Printmaking in London. She won the Clifford Chance prize with a series of etchings inspired by Venice, her native city. This print (and E.25 and 26-2007) come from that series. They are beautiful examples of fine printmaking, combining etching and chine collé and printed using metallic pigments.

The series focused on the transformations that Venice has undergone under the influence of mass tourism, with a shrinking native population but an ever-growing influx of visitors. The subjects include two classic views of Venice - the Lagoon, with a ferry, and St Mark's Square - as well as a more personal subject, My Grandma's Kitchen (in fact a view of a sumptuously decorated hotel bedroom, which had indeed once been the kitchen in her grandmother's apartment). All the prints are characterised by the use of densely patterned grounds suggestive of brocades, silks and velvets for which Venice was famous. They represent the traditional and conservative soul of the city, and symbolise its antique physical fabric. This melding of figurative subject with pattern alludes to Venice's history, but also to reflections on and from water which are so much a part of one's experience of the city.