A Venetian square has been turned into a builder's yard: blocks of white stone lie scattered about, masons work beside a wooden shed at right, and laundry hangs from tall houses. Beyond a canal busy with gondolas, a church with a tall bell tower rises under a gray and blue sky. At the lower left a woman hurries toward a small child who has fallen. Canaletto painted the Campo San Vidal around 1725, looking across the Grand Canal to the church of Santa Maria della Carità and its bell tower.

The National Gallery in London says the square was not normally a mason's yard: it seems to have been turned into a workshop while the nearby church of San Vidal was repaired. Small details tell the story of the morning: a cockerel crows on a windowsill at left, and a neighbor airs bedding above the fallen child. The view has changed since: the Carità bell tower collapsed in 1744 and was never rebuilt, and the church and its Scuola now house the Accademia gallery. Sir George Beaumont, a force behind the founding of the National Gallery, acquired it in 1808; it came to the Gallery in 1828 with his gift, the first Canaletto in the collection.

It is in the National Gallery in London.