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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1830-35 Annual tourist > Southern Germany, Austria and Venice ... > Venice Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner The Basilica of San Marco (St Mark's), Venice, from the Piazzetta, with the Libreria Sansoviniana and the Loggetta of the Campanile, and the Torre dell'Orologio across the Piazza 1833

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Basilica of San Marco (St Mark's), Venice, from the Piazzetta, with the Libreria Sansoviniana and the Loggetta of the Campanile, and the Torre dell'Orologio across the Piazza’ 1833
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 4 Recto:
The Basilica of San Marco (St Mark’s), Venice, from the Piazzetta, with the Libreria Sansoviniana and the Loggetta of the Campanile, and the Torre dell’Orologio across the Piazza 1833
D31934
Turner Bequest CCCXIV 4
Pencil on white laid paper, 109 x 203 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘Stars on a | blu grd’ towards top left over tower, and ‘L[...]’ towards top right over façade
Inscribed by C.F. Bell in black ink ‘4’ bottom left, descending vertically
Stamped in black ‘CCCXIV – 4’ bottom left, descending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Finberg later annotated his 1909 Inventory entry (‘The Basilica of St. Mark’s’): ‘Horologia & S. Marks’.1 The Turner scholar C.F. Bell marked another copy: ‘& Torre dell’Orologio’.2 The page’s title was amended by Ian Warrell to ‘The Basilica of San Marco from the Piazzetta, with the Torre dell’Orologio’ in 2003, in connection with his concurrent Turner and Venice exhibition at Tate Britain.3 The drawing was made with the page turned horizontally.
The view is northwards from the Piazzetta, with the corner of the Libreria Sansoviniana in the left foreground, the arched Loggetta of the campanile in the Piazza San Marco (St Mark’s Square) just beyond, with the tower itself indicated by a cluster of narrow verticals representing its ribbed brickwork. The Torre dell’Orologio is shown next on the north side of the square, with a note of the ‘Stars on a blu[e] gr[oun]d’ which feature on the clock face itself as well as on the backgrounds to the architectural and sculptural elements of its upper stages. There are similar notes above the tower in the oblique view on folio 99 verso (D32114).
The right-hand half of the drawing is taken up with the complexities of the basilica, seen to the north-east with one of the two free-standing ancient Byzantine pillars known as the Pilastri Acritani clearly indicated towards the right (see also folio 3 recto; D31932). The soaring domes and pinnacles of the basilica are continued upwards across the gutter, about a third of the way across folio 3 verso opposite (D31933); the corners of the campanile are also cursorily carried over there. The view is also extended to the right on the verso (D31935), to include a glimpse of the Porta della Carta and the north-west corner of the Palazzo Ducale (Doge’s Palace).
Turner made a much slighter sketch from about the same point on folio 98 recto (D32111). The buildings and prospect are among the best known in Venice, and he had made detailed drawings in the Piazzetta on his first visit, in 1819; see in particular Tate D14399 (Turner Bequest CLXXV 45) in the Milan to Venice sketchbook, which includes part of the palace in the right foreground. He returned to the spot in 1840, with looser drawings in the Venice and Botzen and Rotterdam to Venice books (respectively Tate D31814, D32420; Turner Bequest CCCXIII 12a, CCCXX 80a).
Ian Warrell has suggested4 that this page and folio 30 recto (D31984) informed aspects of a watercolour likely made soon after the 1833 tour (private collection),5 which was engraved in 1835 as the title-page vignette (Tate impression: T04736) for volume III of the Life of Napoleon within the ongoing edition of Walter Scott’s Prose Works. The design shows the view up the Piazzetta from the Molo, centred on the Torre dell’Orologio.6
For this sketchbook’s general sequence, including Hardy George’s broad overview,7 see its Introduction.

Matthew Imms
May 2019

1
Undated MS note by Finberg (died 1939) in interleaved copy of Finberg 1909, Prints and Drawings Room, Tate Britain, II, opposite p.1012; see also Finberg 1930, p.168.
2
Undated MS note by Bell (died 1966) in copy of Finberg 1909, Prints and Drawings Room, Tate Britain, II, p.1012.
3
Noted October 2003 in Tate registrars’ files.
4
Draft notes of 2010–11, Tate cataloguing files.
5
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.431 no.1105, as ‘Venice: the Campanile’, c.1833.
6
See also Ian Warrell in Warrell, David Laven, Jan Morris and others, Turner and Venice, exhibition catalogue, Tate Britain, London 2003, p.79, and Ian Warrell, Turner on the Seine, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1999, pp.83, 85.
7
See George 1984, pp.13–15.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘The Basilica of San Marco (St Mark’s), Venice, from the Piazzetta, with the Libreria Sansoviniana and the Loggetta of the Campanile, and the Torre dell’Orologio across the Piazza 1833 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, May 2019, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, March 2023, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-the-basilica-of-san-marco-st-marks-venice-from-the-piazzetta-r1203613, accessed 22 July 2024.