View of the Grand Canal near Cà Pesaro

Cà Pesaro, one of the largest and most ambitious Baroque palaces on the Grand Canal, was begun by Baldassare Longhena in 1652 and completed only in 1710. By the 1730s, when Marieschi painted this view now held in the Bavarian State Painting Collections, the palace was a fixture of the Grand Canal's visual identity and a standard inclusion in the panoramic vedute that documented the canal's length. Marieschi positions himself on the water to capture the full facade, with the characteristic diamond-rusticated lower story and the richly sculptured upper floors that made Cà Pesaro exceptional even by Venetian standards. The Bavarian collections acquired several Marieschi works, reflecting the taste of the Wittelsbach court for Italian decorative painting. This 1734 canvas may have been produced for export through the dealer network that supplied Northern European courts with Venetian vedute.

The full palace facade is presented in a three-quarter view that catches raking light on the rusticated diamond blocks of the ground floor while casting the upper loggias in softer illumination. Marieschi renders the canal's surface with horizontal dashes of light paint over a dark green-grey ground, creating convincing water movement. The palace's reflection appears as a simplified dark vertical mass in the lower canal.