The picture is one of a series of eleven English architectural subjects painted collaboratively by Antonio Visentini and Fransceso Zuccarelli for Consul Joseph Smith. Visentini and Smith shared a great interest in the designs and theories of the sixteenth-century Venetian architect Andrea Palladio. Landscape with a Triumphal Arch to George II forms part of Smith's commission of a series of overdoor capricci of English neo-Palladian buildings. Visentini painted the buildings using volumes of British architectural engravings for reference, whilst Francesco Zuccarelli painted most of the figures and all of the landscape settings. They date from 1746 and were possibly intended as overdoors for the Consul's villa at Mogliano, on the Venetian mainland near Treviso. Eight of the views were hung in the Entrance Hall at Buckingham House by 1819. They were moved to the Grand Corridor at Windsor Castle in 1828. The painting is described in the 'Italian List' as adapted from Inigo Jones's design for Temple Bar. The engraved source is William Kent's Designs of Inigo Jones (1727). A scheme for erecting a comparable arch in honour of George II was apparently intended at one time, and a drawing of a triumphal arch by Roger Morris was sent to Joseph Smith in Venice, and is among a number of drawings bound up in a Visentini album now at Windsor (RCIN 1150774). The arch is inscribed with allusions to George II's activities in the war of the Austrian Succession and to the battle of Dettingen against the French in 1743. The inscription may be translated: 'To George II, best, triumphant and piuos prince, happy father of his country, on account of [to celebrate] an Emperor granted to Germany, peace established between the Kings of Prussia and Hungary, and the happy destruction of a rebellion stirred up by the perfidious French, by universal consent of a most grateful public in fulfilment of a vom in the year of our Lord 1746'. An equestrian statue of George II crowns the top of the monument, flanked by statues of Hercules and Neptune, while another statue, possibly Venus, gestures to the structure from the right foreground. Various figures, including several men on horseback can be seen before the statues. A man on horseback in seventeenth-century dress rides through the arch, and in the background is a city, perhaps London. Instead of bearing some connection to the events in the inscription, the bas-reliefs are taken from Kent's engraving and refer to events in the reign of Charles I. Signed and dated on the pedestal of the statue, lower right: 'Visentini et Zuccarelli / Fecerunt Venetiis 1746.' Adapted from Canaletto & the Art of Venice, London, 2017.