Houses Along a River

This sketch originally formed a panorama with another sheet, now in the Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge; the subject has been tentatively identified as a stretch of the Brenta River in Padua. Along the top there are very free sketches of the roofs of two houses and a waterwheel. The sheet also bears a number of autograph annotations: B (for bianco, "white"), R (for rosso, "red"), and sciaro tutto to indicate a broad area of shadow. Parts of the view were incorporated in two finished drawings, an etching, and at least one painting. --Exhibition Label, from "Tiepolo, Guardi, and Their World: Eighteenth-Century Venetian Drawings"