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The division between quay and water and the human activity around the market stalls and gondolas make up the theme of this view of the Molo. The quay, which is provided with steps and jetties for mooring boats, creates a striking line in the composition running almost at a right angle to the lower edge of the image and leads the eye toward a vanishing point just below the middle of the painting. Depicted at the right is the column of Todaro beyond which the buildings along the Molo continue with the Library, the Zecca and the State Grain Storage Houses all the way to the Fonteghetto della Farina near the entrance of the Grand Canal. A market with simple stalls and awnings occupies the Fondaco del Grano. To the left of the entrance of the Grand Canal can be seen the Punta della Dogana and Santa Maria della Salute and in the distance, to the extreme left, the Redentore. The composition is closed off at this end by a fishing boat which counterbalances the column of Todaro. As several corrections by the painter, visible to the naked eye reveal, Guardi modified the strong perspective of the buildings at the right and moved the Salute closer to the centre of the composition.
The view of the Molo in the direction of the entrance to the Grand Canal was a subject frequently depicted in Venetian vedute painting. Initially the view functioned primarily as a setting for festive entries in the Doges' Palace, such as in Luca Carlevaris's Reception of Cardinal Cesar d'Estrees (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam). Later the view of the Molo was usually shown without the Doges' Palace and without any kind of festivity.
For this painting, Guardi undoubtedly drew inspiration from a work by Canaletto (c. 1740, private collection) which he may have known through a print by Antonio Visentini from 1742. Not only did Guardi rely on this for his composition, he also borrowed several details from Canaletto such as the little stalls on the Molo and the gondolas floating on the water. However, a comparison with this source makes it clear that Guardi, despite the strong perspectival arrangement of this composition, neither subjected the cityscape to a strict perspectival system nor strove for an exact, detailed rendering of the architecture. For the loosely, vigorously painted figures on the Molo, Guardi more likely found an example in the work of the Genoese painter, Alessandro Magnasco. Furthermore, Guardi's painting is not even half the size of the one by Canaletto.
Guardi's small painting and its pendant, a view of the Piazzetta in the direction of San Giorgio Maggiore (also in the Galleria Franchetti, Venice), no longer satisfied the presumably more representative function of Canaletto's painting, but were purchased instead by an individual client who was as interested in the well-known Venetian cityscapes as in Guardi's painterly rendering of them.
As with many of Francesco Guardi's paintings, the dating of this work is problematic. It no longer displays the strong stylistic dependence on Canaletto which is characteristic of his earliest cityscapes, nor the brown tonality of his work from the 1760s. The shimmering effects of light and colour, especially in the wall surfaces of the buildings, and the nervous treatment of the sky and the figures on the Molo are characteristic of Guardi's extremely individualistic, transparent style in the last two decades of his career. Therefore, dating this painting to the second half of the 1770s seems plausible.
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