Autumn in Venice: Ernest Hemingway and His Last Muse

In the autumn of 1948, Ernest Hemingway and his wife travelled to Venice for the first time. At a duck shoot in the lagoon he met and fell in love with Adriana Ivancich, a striking Venetian girl just out of finishing school.

Adriana was the model for Renata in Hemingway's Across the River and into the Trees, and he continued to visit Venice to see her. When the Ivanciches travelled to Cuba, Adriana was there with him as he wrote The Old Man and the Sea.