A drawing of a view in Piazza San Marco in Venice. On the right is a view through the arcade of the Procuratie Nuove. Two men are shown conversing in the foreground. Other figures are shown in the piazza and under the arcade. On the left is the east end of the Procuratie Vecchie and the Torre dell'Orologio. In the centre is part of San Marco, with the Campanile to its right. The drawing is enclosed within a ruled ink border line.

The number of arches visible in the receding arcade of the Procuratie Nuove, and the point at which the Campanile overlaps the façade of San Marco, locate the viewpoint about fifteen bays from the east end of the Procuratie. Canaletto has introduced a stone platform for his conversing foreground figures to sit on, and has dramatically enlarged the size of the arches - they are in reality no more than 3 metres (10 feet) wide, and Canaletto has effectively removed a pillar to allow a view both into the Piazza and down the arcade.

A discoloured drawing in the Robert Lehman Collection, New York is apparently identical at first glance, but in fact significantly different. There the façade of San Marco (which has its northern dome, omitted here) and the Torre dell'Orologio are smaller, more of the Campanile and Procuratie Vecchie are visible, and many more bays of the arcade are seen to the right. The viewpoint is therefore further to the west, outside Florian's coffee house, and indeed a related painting in the National Gallery, London has the standing figure to the right holding a coffee cup. But in the New York drawing Canaletto failed to amend the position of the Campanile with respect to San Marco, of which significantly more of the façade should there be seen (the National Gallery painting corrects this error). The Royal Collection composition must therefore have been executed first, with the New York version an autograph variant.

Catalogue entry adapted from Canaletto in Venice, London, 2005