In the foreground, two superb black gondolas, with, in the background, the church of the Salute and the façades of the last palaces on the south bank of the Grand Canal, which run towards the tip of the customs house and the Venice basin.

In the centre of the sheet, the water of the Grand Canal, with its reflections; a few gondolas, barely sketched out, leave a space that we can guess is luminous like the sky.

The full and empty spaces of the drawing lead our eye in a zig-zag across the entire surface of the sheet, the wooden poles giving verticality to the whole.

The dark, well-constructed lines of the two empty gondolas, which are almost one, moored to their intertwining wooden stakes, are the real characters of this very beautiful drawing.