A drawing of the Bacino in Venice drawn from in front of the church of San Biagio. The large boat on the left is the Doge's state galley, the Bucintoro. In the centre is the church of Santa Maria della Salute, and on the right the Campanile and the buildings on the Riva della Ca' di Dio and Riva di San Biagio can be seen.

The view is taken from in front of the church of San Biagio, on the Riva (waterfront) as it curves round the Canale di San Marco east of the Bacino. From left, Canaletto has drawn the dome and north flank of San Giorgio Maggiore; the Bucintoro at anchor; the dome of Santa Maria della Salute; the Campanile; the Riva degli Schiavoni, with two belltowers on the skyline, those of San Giorgio dei Greci and San Giovanni in Bragora (the latter demolished in 1826); and the buildings of the Riva della Ca’ di Dio and Riva di San Biagio, drawn in very uncertain perspective. Beyond the bridge over the Rio dell’Arsenale, to the right, is the broad Forni Militari, the state bakery that supplied the Republic’s ships as they left the Arsenale. On the façade of the Forni is a pencil inscription, presumably by Canaletto, which has not been satisfactorily deciphered, though the last part of the first line may read Smartino (the church of San Martino lies a little behind the Forni).

The drawing is close to a larger sheet at Darmstadt (AE 2198), in which the buildings to the right are increased in scale, and the Bucintoro is replaced by a moored boat that dominates the foreground. In those respects it closely resembles another drawing in the Royal Collection (RL 7455), and it is likely that the Darmstadt drawing was a revision of the present sketch, framing its rather uniform middle ground with a couple of blocky foreground elements.

Catalogue entry adapted from Canaletto in Venice, London, 2005