A drawing of a wide-angle view of the Piazzetta and Piazza San Marco in Venice. From left to right the following structures are depicted: the columns of San Marco and San Teodoro, the Libreria, the Campanile, the Procuratie Vecchie, and the narthex of San Marco. Groups of people are shown in the Piazzetta and Piazza.

The east façade of the Libreria is drawn in a simple elevation, which in itself can imply no one point of view. Canaletto added to the left side of this elevation a view through the columns to Santa Maria della Salute, as if from the south of the Piazzetta. To the right is a combination of views into the Piazza from the north of the Piazzetta, including the south end of the narthex of San Marco and the Procuratie Vecchie (greatly extended) beyond. While no single element of the drawing is impossible, the combination of different viewpoints assembled around the elevation of the Libreria has the effect of greatly expanding the apparent width of the Piazzetta, effectively dissolving the Palazzo Ducale.

The composition is possibly based on the first plate of Domenico Lovisa's Gran teatro di Venezia of c.1720, a similar wide-angle view from the column of the lion to the Torre dell'Orologio. Several extant paintings by Canaletto include this orthogonal elevation of the Libreria, but none expands the view so far into the Piazza as to include a portion of San Marco.

Catalogue entry adapted from Canaletto in Venice, London, 2005