Venice: The Upper Reaches of the Grand Canal with S. Simeone Piccolo

The domed church across the water was brand new when this was painted. San Simeone Piccolo had been rebuilt over 20 years by the architect Giovanni Scalfarotto and was inaugurated in April 1738, and even here, a year or two later, a workmen's hut still stands beside its steps while a few people stop to look at the building. The canvas is over two metres wide and busy with everyday traffic. A stout helmsman steers a decorated passenger barge on the left, fishermen haul in their nets in the middle, and a boat carrying two women looks about to run into one of them. Much of what lined this stretch of the Grand Canal has since gone. Santa Croce, the plain-fronted church further along on the left, was pulled down in 1810, and the buildings beyond the tall Scalzi church on the right were demolished in 1861 to make room for the railway station.