The Grimani a San Luca Palace was built for the procurator at San Marco, Girolamo Grimani, after a design by the architect Michele Sanmicheli (1484-1559) and is one of the most important edifices along the Grand Canal. In his book Admiranda Urbis Venetae, Antonio Visentini dedicated nine illustrations (among which are studies of the ground floor windows' consoles) to the palace. The drawing depicts the floorplan of the palace indicating the stairways and separate areas within the building along with the external stairs leading up to the main door. After the fall of the Venetian Republic, the owners wanted to pull down the palace, but the Austrian occupiers finally acquired it and installed the post office headquarter. The interior decoration is lost.

Antonio Visentini (Venice, 21 Nov 1688 – Venice, 26 June 1782) was an Italian painter, engraver, architect and theorist. He was first known as a painter and trained with the Venetian history painter Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini (1675-1741). He became known as an engraver by the end of the 1720s when he was commissioned by Joseph Smith to produce engravings of Canaletto’s views of Venice. Visentini started working as an architect in 1731, and his first theoretical work, Libro di Architettura, which included Rococo-influenced drawings by Pier Antonio Morelli after Visentini’s ideas, was published in 1733.

His ideas on contemporary architecture derived from Antiquity and the work of Andrea Palladio (1508-80). Later however, Visentini developed neo-Palladian and anti-Baroque ideas. Visentini and his pupils executed numerous drawings of ancient and contemporary buildings intended to disseminate exemplary architecture. He participated to the foundation of the Venetian Academy in 1755, where he became a teacher of architectural perspective in 1772.