Giuseppe Canella began his artistic career under the guidance of his father, Giovanni, an architect, fresco painter and set designer, engaging in the production of stage sets and decorative schemes for the stately homes of Verona and Mantua. It may have been under the influence of Pietro Ronzoni that he turned to landscape painting in 1815, following years spent in Venice, where he executed his first vedute, following the artistic tradition of Venetian artists, from Francesco Guardi to Bison and Tranquillo Orsi. Canella become one of the foremost view painters of the early nineteenth century. Born in Verona, he lived in Paris for ten years, exhibiting regularly at the Paris salons, before moving back to Italy, to Milan, in 1832, where he received numerous commissions from the highest circles of Milanese society.

This picture is an exceptionally rare view of the small, atmospheric island of Torcello, lying in northern waters of the Venetian lagoon. The remains of an old label on the reverse of the original stretcher confirm the precise identification of the view on Torcello, and of the artist as Canella himself. The first settlements on the island were made in the fifth century, but it is arguably its more recent history that has gained more widespread recognition for Torcello, notably as being a favourite place of Ernest Hemingway. He spent a significant amount of time on the island, hunting ducks and writing his novel Across the River and Into the Trees, which was penned on Torcello in November 1948, with the present view appearing to his protagonist '...on a clear day such as this was. Across the marshes...with their reeds bent by the heavy north wind...the squared tower of the church at Torcello and the high campanile of Burano beyond it'.