The great domed church of Santa Maria della Salute rises on the left at the mouth of Venice's Grand Canal, its white stone front and broad steps dotted with small figures. Moored boats with furled sails and tan covers crowd the left foreground, while gondolas, one with a black cabin, cross the green water, rowed by men in red caps. Palaces line the right bank, the canal runs back to distant bell towers, and white clouds fill half the sky. Canaletto, born in Venice as the son of a theatrical scene painter, was famed for precisely drawn views of his city, and the National Gallery in London notes that he may have used a camera obscura for topographical accuracy.

The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, dates this canvas to about 1730. The museum also owns his view of the Grand Canal near the Rialto Bridge, dated about 1730 as well. The painting came to Houston as a gift of Sarah Campbell Blaffer, part of The Robert Lee Blaffer Memorial Collection. The museum's records list it in several Canaletto exhibitions, among them the one at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 1989–90.

It is in the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, in Houston.