At the berth

A woman in a black masquerade mask and off-the-shoulder gown with full white sleeves stands in profile against a row of arched, grille-covered windows. She raises one hand to hold a small bunch of grapes near her chin while the other hand hovers below. To the right, a canal lined with dark gondolas recedes toward a hazy skyline of domes and towers.

A warm, gilded palette of ochre, bronze, and cream, textured with raised plaster-like impasto, sets off the flat black of the bodice and mask and the cool teal-green of the gondola hulls. The stylized, decorative rendering of the figure against a richly worked, almost sculptural surface gives the scene a hushed, theatrical, faintly mysterious air.