View of the Grand Canal with the Fabbriche Nuove di Rialto, 1756 - 1760

The picture arrived in the Pinacoteca as part of the bequest from Pietro Oggioni. Guardi was trained as a painter of figures in the studio of his father Domenico, but started to paint vedute around the middle of the 1750s, imitating the perspective framings and sweeping views of Canaletto but adopting a more rapid style based on frayed brushstrokes which produced more blurred and vibrant atmospheres than those of the master.
Guardi must have painted this picture, a companion piece to his View of the Grand Canal, after 1754, the year in which the onion domed bell tower in the distance was added to the church of San Bartolomeo. Guardi frays his surfaces with rapid dabs of light and shade that breathe life into countless tiny figures and impart a dramatic reality to his views.