A drawing of a view in Piazza San Marco in Venice. The building running down the right hand side of the drawing is the Procuratie Vecchie. In the centre of the composition is the now-destroyed church of San Geminiano. The square is shown full of figures.

The lack of foreground detail makes the viewpoint hard to establish exactly, but the angle from which the corner of the Piazza is seen suggests that it is from perhaps ten bays from the end of the Procuratie Nuove. The legs of the river-gods in the spandrels are not shown, but the heads of lions and warriors in the frieze have come into view. The figures in the distance are drawn too large, thus reducing the apparent width of the Piazza.

A variant in the Louvre (Inv. 4794) expands the view, reducing the size of the west range of the Piazza and showing many more bays of the Procuratie Vecchie.

Catalogue entry adapted from Canaletto in Venice, London, 2005