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

The viewpoint is just outside the Porta della Carta entrance to the Palazzo Ducale (Doge’s Palace), looking west-south-west, with the north-west corner of the palace on the left, and the two ancient Byzantine pillars known as the Pilastri Acritani outside the south-west corner of the Basilica of San Marco (St Mark’s) on the right. Beyond to the left, facing the Piazzetta in the morning sunlight, is the Libreria Sansoviniana, with the Procuratie Nouve receding along the south side of the Piazza (St Mark’s Square). Tate D32244 (Turner Bequest CCCXVIII 28) is a contemporary watercolour study looking in the opposite direction from about the same point, through the Porta della Carta itself.1

Ian Warrell has characterised the view:

It is always a moot point as to how much of Turner’s watercolour work was done immediately in front of the subject. D32244, for example, reveals considerable manipulation of proportion and detail, either deliberately or through reliance on pencil studies, making it perhaps less likely to have been produced at the site. In the present instance, the immediacy of the effect of light and the accuracy in placing the various elements suggests that at least a substantial beginning was made on the spot. Of many pencil studies made over the years in this vicinity, compare Tate D32435 (Turner Bequest CCCXX 88) in the 1840 Rotterdam to Venice sketchbook, a horizontal panoramic view from a few steps further on and to the right from an unusual position in the narrow space between the pillars and the church; it looks both south down the Piazzetta and east to the campanile of St Mark’s (as here), but without enough detail to fully inform the present work.

The scene is dominated by the campanile, with the Loggetta at its base. This is one of the clearest renderings of the tower with scaffolding around its spire. Finberg later annotated his 1909 Inventory entry (‘South Side of St. Mark’s’): ‘cf CCCXX.88’ (see above) and ‘Campanile under repair ...’.3 The Turner scholar C.F. Bell similarly noted in his own copy: ‘scaffolding on the cuspide’.4 Its relatively temporary presence is the key factor in dating such views, and technically similar works, to Turner’s last stay in Venice; see the tour Introduction.5

Technical notes:

There is relatively little pencil work, most of the architectural detail being rendered in delicate lines and touches of dark watercolour with white gouache highlights.

This is one of numerous 1840 Venice works Ian Warrell has noted as being on ‘Bally, Ellen and Steart grey paper’ which Turner had also used on his Continental tour of 1833, including Venice, and therefore ‘the dating of some of these sheets in uncertain’ (see in particular Tate D32205–D32210; Turner Bequest CCCXVII 20–25); the following ‘seem to arise from the later visit’:1 Tate D32180–D32181, D32183–D32184, D32200–D32201, D32203–D32204, D32212, D32215, D32217 (Turner Bequest CCCXVII 1, 2, 4, 5, 15, 16, 18, 19, 27–30, 32); see also Venice: San Giorgio Maggiore and the Zitelle from the Giudecca (currently untraced)2 and The Doge’s Palace from the Bacino (private collection),3 and two further ‘half-size sheets’:4 Tate D33883 (Turner Bequest CCCXLI 183), and Shipping with Buildings, ?Venice (Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge).5

Verso:

Blank; inscribed in pencil ‘20’ below right of centre, and ‘CCCXVII.19’ bottom right; stamped in black with Turner Bequest monogram over ‘CCCXVII – 19’ bottom left.