This is one of the first known paintings by the artist, dated 1738: Bellotto was then only sixteen years old. It is also the most securely attributed Venetian views by Bellotto, being (with its former pendant) the only Venetian view by Bellotto whose attribution is confirmed by a contemporary document. Its first owner James Harris, father of the 1st Earl of Malmesbury, recorded in his own Account of my Pictures begun in 1739 having acquired ‘Four views of Venice’ including ‘two … by Antonio Bellotti [the artist’s Christian name presumably mistaken for that of his uncle, Canaletto], one representing the Custom House [this painting]; the other, the Rialto’ for which he paid ten guineas. ‘They were painted all at Venice, & imported at my Request by Mr. Wm. Hayter of London March 1743’. Like most of Bellotto’s works during his period in the workshop of his uncle, the painting is loosely based on a smaller work by Canaletto, in this case that of c. 1729-30 (measuring 18 3/4 x 31 1/4 in., 47.6 x 79.2 cm.) then in the collection of Joseph Smith in his house on the Grand Canal, the Palazzo Mangilli-Valmarana, and now in the collection of Her Majesty the Queen (W.G. Constable, Canaletto, London, 1962, and subsequent editions revised by J.G. Links, I, pl. 36; II, no. 161; then in the exhibition Canaletto in Venice at the Queen’s Gallery, London, no. 12).