View of the Venetian Lagoon with the Tower of Malghera

This National Gallery view of the Venetian lagoon with the Tower of Malghera from around 1770 depicts one of the more desolate and open lagoon prospects available to Guardi — looking west from Venice toward the mainland, where the defensive tower of Malghera rose above the flat lagoon horizon. The mainland fortification visible across the water served as a reminder of Venice's terrafirma territorial ambitions and its need to defend the lagoon approaches from hostile forces. Guardi's lagoon views have a different atmospheric quality from his canal vedute: without the organizing presence of architecture, the composition is dominated by water, sky, and the relationship between them, with the distant mainland reduced to a thin horizontal line. These open lagoon views anticipate the coastal and atmospheric interests of early nineteenth-century painters from Turner to Constable, and the National Gallery's acquisition acknowledges Guardi's significance not only as a recorder of Venice's built environment but as a pioneering painter of open-water landscape.

The vast lagoon expanse creates a luminous, almost abstract composition dominated by sky and water. Small boats and the distant tower provide scale against the immensity of the atmospheric space.