Venice: The Giudecca with the Zitelle

Beyond Venice’s Grand Canal, on the peaceful island of Guidecca in the easternmost part of the city, is the domed church of Santa Maria della Presentazione. Better known as the Zitelle, the church was built in the sixteenth century and attached to a foundling hospital for young girls (zitella is Italian for ’spinster').We see energetic figures unload cargo and row gondolas across the lagoon, all described with vibrant colour against a backdrop dominated by blue and brown tones. Guardi often positioned an elegant, white sail in the left foreground of his pictures to draw us into the scene – see his The Punta della Dogana and Venice: The Doge’s Palace and the Molo – and here the device is repeated in the two boats a little further back. In Venice: The Punta della Dogana, the companion picture to this one, he used a boat’s spindly bare mast to the same effect.