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

The Turner scholar C.F. Bell annotated Finberg’s 1909 unspecific Inventory entry (‘A palace and other buildings’): ‘Palazzo Dandolo (Danieli’s Hotel) from Ponte del Vin’.1 With the page turned horizontally, the view is from the Ponte del Vin on the Riva degli Schiavoni, with the Gothic hotel looming on the right immediately beyond. The familiar buildings further west are indicated as simplified geometric forms, with the New Prisons below the bulk of the Palazzo Ducale (Doge’s Palace), and the Libreria Sansoviniana and Zecca beyond the Piazzetta towards the left. In the distance are the domes of Santa Maria della Salute, at the entrance to the Grand Canal to the west-south-west.

The lightly drawn thumbnail sketches at the top left show another aspect of the scene. Compare the detailed rendering in the 1819 Venice to Ancona sketchbook (Tate D14493–D14494; Turner Bequest CLXXVI 3a–4). There are similar views on folios 13 verso and 27 recto (D31816, D31842) of the present book. Compare the loosely rendered 1840 watercolour of the Riva by moonlight (Tate D32225; Turner Bequest CCCXVIII 6).

At about the centre of the page, coinciding with the far end of the hotel, is a small looping mark; this is the head of one of the figures in a boat on folio 5 verso (D31800), carried over from the edge of the torn or malformed leaf, which was evidently in that state when Turner used it.