These two drawings depict perhaps the most famous views of Venice, and are typical of the carefully finished drawings of the city produced by Canaletto throughout his career. What is at first sight a straightforward view is distorted in several respects – for instance, the Campanile (the belltower of San Marco) is too thin, and Canaletto has squeezed the Palazzo Ducale widthways to compress the panorama into a normally proportioned drawing. Exceptionally, the two sheets feature a decorative border drawn by the artist himself.