The roar of revving engines in high-net-worth autos ranging from a 1913 Isotta Fraschini IM to a token modern concept car reverberated through our bones as we awaited the start of the Louis Vuitton Classic Serenissima Run.
Nearby, an unidentified man in sober black, painted a quarter-century later and standing against pale, classicizing architecture, epitomizes the more restrained taste of La Serenissima with its miraculously varied textures, transparencies and sheens, within an uncompromising silhouette of inky darkness.