Burnished gold light falls across a cluster of broad-sailed Venetian fishing boats becalmed on a mirror-flat lagoon at dusk — "Under Venetian Skies" reads the caption in elegant script at the bottom of this sumptuous art-reproduction postcard, the whole scene rendered in the rich ochre, sienna, and cream palette of a Dutch-school maritime oil painting, signed faintly by the artist in the lower right. The card was sent with tender purpose: "With love from your loving cousin — Chris," addressed to Lea G— of Oconomowoc, Wisconsin, in the lush era when sending a little painted beauty through the mail was the most intimate long-distance gesture available. The reverse follows the pre-1907 undivided-back convention with the note that domestic postage required one cent and foreign two — a detail that helps pin the mailing to the earliest years of the twentieth century's postcard mania.