Canaletto transformed the cityscape of Venice into a profitable subject to sell to British Grand Tourists, but the idealised rural landscape had always been a popular subject in Venetian art, often as a setting for episodes from biblical stories or classical mythology.

Having begun his career working for the stage, Marco Ricci made many landscape paintings, drawings and etchings, travelling out into the countryside of the Veneto to make drawings from nature. His work and that of his younger colleague Francesco Zuccarelli build on the classicism of Claude Lorrain (1600–1682), Nicolas Poussin (1594–1665) and the arcadian tradition of their revered predecessors, Titian (c.1490–1576) and Giorgione (d. 1510). Landscape subjects were especially popular among native Venetian patrons.