A good composition from the artist but his thoughts are that the water reflections are not strong enough and I agree with this. The far buildings are in a lovely warm light and colourful, but the foreground ones are rather pale with pale shadows. His use of warm light could have worked well taken into the foreground too with stronger colours and deeper tones in the windows. This and perhaps introducing purples & lilacs to the shadow areas would have enabled the reflections to have been made more colourful as well as introducing deeper tones into the water. Warm light and cooler shadows make for a good combination.
The red canopies too could too have been reflected into the water and the arches of the bridge are perhaps just a little too dark. It is these little bits that add interest to a painting.
To make for recession we need more detail, stronger, warmer colours with a wider tonal difference in the foreground, less detail with cooler colours and narrower tonal differences to make the image recede.
A really difficult subject to tackle loads of perspective which has been executed well. I like position of the Gondola and the posts to the left. Wonderful sky!
Be braver next time. this is very promising work.
PS I think the photo image has slightly distorted the near foreground . I took this into consideration when I did the critique.