A drawing of the Piazzetta in Venice. On the left is the Libreria, and beyond the Campanile. On the right is the Palazzo Ducale, and beyond part of the facade of San Marco. In the distance, in the centre is the Torre dell'Orologio, and the east end of the Procuratie Vecchie. Many figures are shown in the Piazzetta.

The viewpoint is ostensibly a little off the Molo, though it is likely that Canaletto assembled the composition from studies taken on dry land, not entirely successfully - San Marco appears to merge with the distant Torre dell’Orologio, the scale of the figures in the Piazzetta is inconsistent, and the perspective of the Palazzo Ducale is slightly fudged such that its near corner seems to be sinking into the Piazzetta. As usual, Canaletto has heightened and slimmed the Campanile, but the most significant deviation from reality is the omission of the column with the lion of St Mark, which should dominate the centre foreground.

Canaletto painted the composition several times, the prime version being a painting at Woburn Abbey, in which the sunlight falls from the right and the Libreria is diminished in size and further away across a widened Piazzetta. In those respects the painting follows a schematic drawing at Darmstadt (AE 2248), dated July 1732, but the eye-level perspective of this drawing was corrected in the Woburn painting, and here, to give the impression of a view from a height of about 5 metres.

Catalogue entry adapted from Canaletto in Venice, London, 2005