Turner seems to have stayed at the Hotel Europa on some if not all of his visits to Venice. There are many drawings and watercolours made from the hotel, including views of fireworks taken from the roof or an upper room (see Nos.557 and 562). Exceptionally among Turner's later oil paintings this picture seems to be in part taken from a drawing of the Dogana and the Zitella (the 'Citella' of Turner's title) in the 'Milan to Venice' sketchbook, made on Turner's first visit in 1819 (т.в. CLXXV-40, repr. Finberg Venice 1930, pl.2; see No.208). However, the view is such a well-known one that recourse to a drawing may not have been necessary. A similar view but omitting San Giorgio on the left appears in the watercolour entitled "The New Moon' in the collection of D. G. Ells. This probably dates from about 1840 but, pace Finberg (ibid, pp.140, I61, repr. in colour pl.24), is unlikely to have been used as a basis for the oil as the viewpoint is slightly different.

This picture and the other Venetian oil exhibited in 1842, 'Campo Santo, Venice' (Toledo Museum of Art) were, on the whole, highly praised by the critics. For the Spectator, 7 May, they were 'two lovely views of Venice, gorgeous in hue and atmospheric in tone.' For the Athenaeum of the same date they were 'among the loveliest, because least exaggerated pictures, which this magician (for such he is, in right of his command over the spirits of Air, Fire, and Water) has recently given us. Fairer dreams never floated past poets' eye; and the aspect of the City of Waters is hardly one iota idealised. As pieces of effect, too, these works are curious; close at hand, a splashed palette - an arm's length distant, a clear and delicate shadowing forth of a scene made up of crowded and minute objects!' The Art Union for 1 June was rather more critical. Venice was surely built to be painted by Canaletti and Turner . . . The Venetian pictures are now among the best this artist paints, but the present specimens are of a decayed brilliancy; we mean, they are by no means comparable with others he has within a few years exhibited. A great error in Mr. Turner's smooth water pictures is, that the reflection of colours in the water are painted as strongly as the substances themselves, a treatment which diminishes the value of objects.' The picture was purchased at the Academy by Robert Vernon and given to the National Gallery with three other Turners in 1847 (see No.529). Placed on view as a token of the whole of Vernon's collection of contemporary painting, it was the first Turner to be shown there.