Venice, the Piazzetta looking south from the Basilica di San Marco with the Biblioteca and a crowd gathered to watch a Commedia dell'arte performance

This view depicts one of the most celebrated sights of Venice, the Piazzetta, looking south, flanked by the Basilica di San Marco on the left and Jacopo Sansovino's Libreria on the right, with the two monumental twin columns on which stand statues of the Lion of Saint Mark and Saint Theodore, Venice’s patron saints.

Like the accompanying canvas, this picture corresponds closely to one of Bernhard Vogel's engravings after Richter. It, too, is extended from the mise-en-scène presented in the engraving, with a further four bays of Sansovino’s Libreria on the right, and an additional two arches of the basilica on the left. Again, the basic arrangement of the staffage largely corresponds. In each, a temporary stage is set up on the left before the Palazzo Ducale, around which gather a throng of figures that thin out towards the Libreria. However, specific figures do not match in the painting and print.

Rizzi similarly gave a comparable canvas to Carlevarijs with the help of a collaborator (Rizzi, op. cit., 1967, fig. 157). Though not reproduced by Reale, Rizzi's painting is likewise likely by the Swedish-born artist. Unlike the view of the Piazzetta looking north-west, however, Carlevarijs is not known to have painted the Piazzetta from this precise viewpoint. A painting from a Scottish private collection, which must date to a very similar moment in Richter’s career, was sold Sotheby’s, London, 9 December 2009, lot 46. It shares a strikingly similar palette and brushwork, and must surely have been executed only a short time before or after. Various figures recur, though in some cases with the colour of particular items of clothing changed: the lady seen from behind wearing yellow on top and blue beneath, almost directly between the two columns and talking to a masked gentleman who leans in towards her, can be seen at the left of the principal figure group in the ex-Scottish work, though there appears wearing a red, rather than a blue, skirt.