A drawing of the lower section of the Grand Canal in Venice. On the left is Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, followed by Palazzo Centani, Palazzo da Mula, and the bell tower of Santa Maria della Carità. On the right is Palazzo Contarini degli Scrigni, Palazzo Pisani and Palazzo Corner della Ca' Grande.

Dominating the right bank is Palazzo Corner della Ca’ Grande, begun in 1533 to the designs of Sansovino and now the Prefettura. Beyond, towering over its neighbours, is Palazzo Pisani, just completed by Girolamo Frigimelica when Canaletto made his drawing. In the furthest distance, with a small roof-tower, is Palazzo Contarini degli Scrigni, which occupies the left foreground of the following drawing. To the left is the belltower of Santa Maria della Carità; further left, the tall façades of Palazzo da Mula and Palazzo Centani, in sharp foreshortening. At the left edge of the sheet is the gothic Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, pulled down in the 1740s to make way for a new palace; only the ground floor was completed before work came to a halt, and the stump of the building now houses the Peggy Guggenheim collection. In the left foreground men perilously handle a huge barrel on a sandolo, while to the right others punt a long raft downstream.

The view, excluding Palazzo Corner, was constructed from four openings of the Sketchbook. Also in the Royal Collection is a second version of the drawing that replicates most of the composition but reduces the scale of Palazzo Corner and includes more of Palazzo Venier at the left (RL 7469), and it was this second version that Bellotto reproduced in the drawing at Darmstadt (AE 2200). The buildings here agree closely with the painting at Woburn Abbey. Visentini’s engraving for the 1742 Prospectus reproduces the two sides of the composition on different scales, radically enlarging the left with respect to the right.

Inscribed in pen on the verso: antonio

Catalogue entry adapted from Canaletto in Venice, London, 2005