J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours

Although the treatment here is more detailed than on folio 33 verso opposite (D14547; Turner Bequest CLXXVI 29a), the two pages appear to form a panorama. The foreground is not presented in detail, making the exact viewpoint difficult to establish, especially in the light of subsequent development, but it appears to have been a little east of that adopted at the Montagnola Gardens for folio 33 recto (D14546; Turner Bequest CLXXVI 29), and more in alignment with the present Via Capo di Luca.

On the left Turner notes ‘S Jacomo’ above the campanile of San Giacomo Maggiore. To its right are the dome and campanile of Santi Bartolomeo e Gaetano, with the leaning Torre Garisenda below the taller Torre Asinelli. To their right, at about half the distance, is the campanile of San Martino Maggiore. Then comes the dome of the Sanctuary of Santa Maria della Vita, with a lightly drawn cluster of towers on the right: the Torre Azzoguidi (or Altabella) behind the Torre Prendiparte, the crenellated tower of the Palazzo del Podestà, and the campanile spire of the Cathedral of Sanpietro. Towards the foreground at the bottom centre may be a watermill.

The Turner scholar C.F. Bell bracketed the two pages and annotated Finberg’s 1909 Inventory entry (‘View of Bologna, with the Towers of Asinelli, &c.’) as a ‘Panorama from S. Michele in Bosco’,1 but the church and monastery complex he notes is on the south side of the city.

For Cecilia Powell’s general comments on Turner’s views of Bologna from a distance here and around the Sanctuary of the Madonna di San Luca (folios 32 verso–39 recto; D14545–D14558; Turner Bequest CLXXVI 28a–35), see under D14545;2 for general remarks on the city and numerous views on adjacent pages, see under folio 24 recto (D14532).