The double portrait of this work and inv. 1986.1.379, after Giovanni Battista Piazzetta’s design, follows the title page in Antonio Visentini’s engraved series entitled Urbis Venetiarum Prospectus Celebriores (The Most Renowned Perspectives of the City of Venice). The first edition of 1735 reproduces Canaletto’s fourteen paintings, which were commissioned and owned by the British merchant and banker Joseph Smith. Later, twenty-four more scenes, also after Canaletto’s views in Smith’s collection, were added for an expanded publication in 1742. The paintings depict Smith’s palazzo on the Grand Canal as well as the area around San Marco, the civic and religious heart of Venice, dominated by the great basilica and the tower. Visentini’s reproductions of Venice became the standard for the remainder of the century. Although Visentini’s etchings lack the vibrating lines and tonal contrasts that animate Canaletto’s drawings and etchings, they nonetheless successfully render the balance of architecture with space and light that characterizes the master’s paintings.