View of the Grand Canal

Bellotto's Grand Canal view, painted in 1735 when he was still working closely with Canaletto in Venice, is among his earliest independent treatments of the canonical Venetian subject. The young Bellotto — he was only fifteen in 1735 — demonstrated precocious command of his uncle's style, and the two painters' works from this period are sometimes confused. This early Grand Canal view marks the beginning of his development toward an individual approach.

The composition follows Canaletto's established Grand Canal format but already shows Bellotto's cooler colour temperature and slightly different handling of sky and water. The architectural facades are rendered with careful precision consistent with his uncle's teaching. The gondola traffic and figures provide the compositional foreground that was standard in the veduta tradition.