File:Artgate Fondazione Cariplo - Bazzaro Leonardo, Barca in laguna.jpg

Displayed with many other works in the solo exhibition devoted to the artist at the Galleria Guglielmi, Milan, in 1941, the painting originally came from the collection owned by the painter Giulio Cesare Vinzio (Livorno, 1881 – Milan, 1940). The autograph dedication attests to a close friendship between the two artists in the 1930s, or thereabouts, when Vinzio was living in Milan and was an honorary member of the Brera Academy.

The work in the Cariplo Collection, erroneously identified recently by scholars as Boat on the Lagoon, can be ascribed to the last decade of the artist’s career. As in the canvases Fire! Fire!, Chioggia and To the Bank, the viewpoint is probably located along the Vena Canal, enlivened here by three fishermen busy with their nets.

During the years of radical artistic renewal in the third decade of the 20th century, the painter clung to the subjects that had contributed to the success of Lombard Naturalism. On this canvas he fixed, albeit with a new terse facture, the memory of a scene he had observed many times from the banks of Chioggia’s canals, as a sign of friendship for the young fellow artist to whom the work is dedicated.