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

The Turner scholar C.F. Bell annotated Finberg’s 1909 Inventory entry (‘Buildings’): ‘Doges’ Palace from near to Zecca’.1 He also marked a copy of Finberg’s 1930 book In Venice with Turner with a similar phrase.2 The page’s title was amended by Ian Warrell to ‘The Giardino del Palazzo Reale, with the Doge’s Palace and the Riva degli Schiavoni beyond’ 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 viewpoint is the Bacino just east of the entrance to the Grand Canal, about level with the prominent modern ferry stage alongside the Giardini (or Giardinetti) Reali, indicated by the loosely hatched trees in the left foreground, above which parallel verticals lightly indicate the campanile of San Marco (St Mark’s) beyond to the north-east. The waterfront past the small bridge over the Rio dei Giardinetti (or della Luna) comprises the schematically rendered Zecca (the mint) and the adjoining Libreria Sansoviniana, the entrance to the Piazzetta with its two columns (see the verso, D31942, for a frontal view), the Palazzo Ducale (Doge’s Palace) and the New Prisons.

The prospect continues eastwards along the Riva degli Schiavoni towards a cluster of vertical strokes possibly indicating the windows of the Hotel Danieli (Palazzo Dandolo; see folio 9 recto, D31943) or the unfinished façade of the Pietà church; the prospect may be continued across the Bacino to San Giorgio Maggiore on folio 7 verso opposite (D31940), where the Pietà is shown more clearly. The western end of the gardens appears on folio 28 recto (D31980); for this sketchbook’s convoluted general sequence, including Hardy George’s broad overview,4 see its Introduction.