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

This two-part horizontal view is effectively a continuation of that north from the Bacino up the Piazzetta on folio 3 verso opposite (D31796). Here the south-western corner of the Palazzo Ducale (Doge’s Palace) is seen on the left, with the whole waterfront façade dominating the upper view, with the New Prisons to the right. Below, looking north-east, is a rather compressed continuation along the Riva degli Schiavoni, including the Hotel Danieli (the Palazzo Dandolo; see the verso, D31798), as far as the church of the Pietà, with the thermal clerestory window on its west front lightly but clearly indicated; compare the slighter drawing on folio 19 recto (D31827), where the church may be seen from a similar angle, and there is a separate elevation of its façade..

Turner has numbered various aspects of the palace’s articulation: seventeen finials to the left of the central feature around the balcony; thirty-three complete quatrefoil openings (and a half at each end) in the spandrels of the thirty-four first-floor arches; and twelve open ground floor arches along the Molo, five more being then blocked at the right-hand end. As Ian Warrell has noted, this ‘inspection did not result in a better understanding of the asymmetrical placing of the two easterly windows, which are older and sit lower than those on their left.’1

Compare the 1840 watercolour of the whole view, crowded with boats in the foreground (Tate D32154; Turner Bequest CCCXVI 17).