This is one of the important plates Roth made during his trip through Italy following the Armistice. At the age of forty-five he was fully mature as both a designer and a technician, and it shows in this print. It depicts the Basilica di Santa Maria della Salute, the Baroque church designed by Baldassare Longhena in 1630 to commemorate the deliverance of the city from the plague epidemic of the 1630's. The design departs from conventional practice in that it arranges the church as an octagon, with a monumental dome resting on top. The church took fifty-one years to complete, relies on over a million wooden pilings to support it, and goes a long way towards defining the visual identity of Venice.

Few artists combined images of the daily life of Venice with those of its monuments as skillfully as Roth - the harbor traffic passing to and fro in front of the great church is utterly convincing, and reminds the viewer that Venice was first and foremost a maritime trading community. Roth's meticulous attention to detail is evident in his delineation of even the most insignificant pedimental sculptures, as is his command of the building's overall massing and disposition.

Roth's treatment of the sloops and skiffs coursing the canals of Venice is that of someone for whom sail transport was still a living technology. Few things are as engaging as the sight of wind-driven craft gliding gracefully over a calm waterway, and Roth succeeds in bring this otherwise static scene to life. This, mercifully, is the city before the advent of vapos and guided package tours.

On close inspection we see once more Roth's development of tone through line work alone. This, coupled with his painstaking application of acid to the plate using a feather, enabled him to guage with absolute precision the depth and strength of each line, with a corresponding increase in the number of distinct tonal values he could achieve. This is one of the reasons his work stands out, and why it seems so fresh and contemporary even today.