Born in Miskovice in Bohemia, a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in what is now Czechia, in 1848, Antonietta Brandeis traveled to Venice with her widowed mother in 1860. In 1867, she enrolled in the Accademia di Belle Arte, where she graduated at the top of her class as one of only two female students. Much of her oeuvre is devoted to small scale Venetian vedute, which were the perfect momenti for both American and European visitors to Venice on the Grand Tour. Her works were hotly sought-after for their luminous and colorful palette as well as her keen eye for detail, demonstrated in the crisp rendering of iconic Venetian settings and for the lively array of individual figures that often animate her scenes.