A drawing of an invented view, known as a capricco. The drawing features architectural elements from the church of Santi Maria e Donato on the island of Murano. On the right is part of the church, and on the left its distinctive bell tower. This drawing is similar to RL 7493.

The church with its free-standing belltower is based on the church of Santi Maria e Donato on the island of Murano, a kilometre north of Venice. A church dedicated to the Virgin was founded on Murano probably in the seventh century, during the first wave of settlement of the Venetian archipelago. In 1125 the relics of the fourth-century St Donatus, bishop of Euraea in modern-day Albania, were brought to the church from Cephalonia, together with the bones of the dragon he slew (which still hang behind the altar), and the church was rededicated and rebuilt in Romanesque style. The church was heavily restored in the 1970s, retaining its overall form but losing much of its exterior charm.

Canaletto combined two views in the drawing, though neither is wholly reliable. The left side shows the belltower and the flanking palazzo (since demolished) from the Ponte di San Donato, looking west; the right side shows the church and flagpole as seen from the southern corner of Campo San Donato, roughly at the corner of the left-hand building, looking north. The effect is to turn the church through 90° with respect to the belltower. Canaletto maintained the general form of the church, while moving the semicircular arcaded apse to the south transept and altering the windows. He also captured many of the details of the belltower, though not its overall proportions, and in combining the two views he diminished its massive size with respect to the church.

Catalogue entry adapted from Canaletto in Venice, London, 2005