View of Dolo

Canaletto's View of Dolo, also around 1755 and also in the Fondation Bemberg, depicts the town of Dolo on the Brenta Riviera — a point on the famous Brenta canal journey where Venetian patricians traveled by burchiello boat to their summer villas. The Brenta Riviera was lined with Palladian and post-Palladian country houses belonging to Venice's great families — the Pisani at Stra, the Foscari at Malcontenta — and the journey down the Brenta from Padua or up from Venice was one of the defining experiences of aristocratic Venetian life. Dolo, with its mills and riverside activity, was a working town amid the patrician pleasures of the Riviera, and Canaletto's interest in its practical commercial character parallels his Venetian documentation of working waterways alongside ceremonial ones. The pairing of this work with the Mestre view in the Fondation Bemberg suggests they may have been conceived as part of a series documenting the approaches to Venice from the mainland — a project complementing his urban vedute with a survey of the Venetian geographical matrix.

The composition shows the river flowing through the town, the bridges and buildings of Dolo reflected in the calm water. Canaletto's warm afternoon light and his careful treatment of the water surface create a peaceful pastoral quality distinct from his busier Venetian canal scenes. The handling of trees and vegetation beside the water shows his sensitivity to landscape as well as architecture.