[1] This group of three novels, which one critic would call Cooper's "European trilogy", include The Heidenmauer and The Headsman.

In this context, the few chapters which present Venice as brightly lit, depict daylight as a hypocritical false front.

However, Moonlight, unlike sunlight and artificial lighting, illuminates scenes of hope to overcome the dark "official Venice".

Cooper would later explain that he wrote the novel because " the great political contest of the age was not, as is usually pretended, between the two antagonist principles of monarchy and democracy, but in reality between those who, under the shallow pretense of limiting power to the elite of society, were contending for exclusive advantages at the expense of the mass of their fellow-creature.

[7] To Cooper, Venice's government is unable to meet the demands of its citizens, even representing its aristocrats as victims.