These two drawings show Canaletto transposing a real-life subject into an imagined setting. The first depicts a corner of Piazza San Marco, with the façade of the basilica on the right and the Torre dell’Orologio (clock tower) on the left. Canaletto then redrew the façade in the same position but placed it on the edge of the Venetian lagoon, with antique fragments in the foreground and an imagined shoreline in the distance.