With its luminous atmosphere, shimmering canals, and storied past, Venice provided Turner with an ideal opportunity to explore light, color, and historical narrative through landscape. Although the well-traveled Turner first visited Venice in 1819, he did not produce his first oil painting of a Venetian subject until 1833. Yet Venice loomed large in Turner's output from the 1830s and 1840s, when he strove to evoke the city celebrated by Shakespeare and Byron by emulating its past masters. Influenced by renowned colorists including Titian and Tintoretto, Turner combined precise renderings of recognizable buildings with bold streaks of painterly white highlights.

Exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1835, this painting is a product of Turner's second visit to Venice two years earlier. The work combines two vantage points to achieve its panoramic view. Turner seems to have been equally interested in capturing such evanescent effects as reflections of boats on the glassy water and wispy clouds floating across the sky.

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