Venice 

Félix Ziem crafted this evocative 'Venice' painting with oil, capturing the ethereal dance between light and water. The gondola stands out, a vessel steeped in Venetian lore, its silhouette echoing the city's serpentine canals. Consider the gondola beyond mere transport; it's a symbol, a carrier of souls akin to Charon's boat, ferrying passengers across the liminal space of water and time. This motif echoes in ancient Egyptian barques carrying pharaohs to the afterlife, or Viking ships laden with the honored dead, setting sail towards Valhalla. The Venetian gondola, too, carries a weighty history, evoking a complex interplay of romance, mystery, and the inevitable passage of time, engaging our subconscious with themes of mortality and passage. The non-linear progression of the symbol resurfaces, evolved, in different contexts.