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

Although Finberg described this page as blank on two occasions,1 there is, as Ian Warrell noted, a ‘rudimentary’ study of part of the Doge’s Palace.2 The full-page view opposite, also inverted relative to the sketchbook’s foliation, includes the southern end of its west front, facing the Piazzetta, and shows only one of the six large arched windows high up along that side (flanking the elaborately framed central balcony featuring a similarly shaped arch).

The slight sketch here appears to show the smaller twin arched windows either side of one of the round windows at the attic level above the third main window from the end, with an indication of the edge of the projecting aedicule around the balcony. Although at about the same scale and relative level, being proportionately too close to the gutter it does not form a direct continuation from the opposite page but a separate memorandum of an irregularity in the facade’s fenestration that happened to catch Turner’s eye. He had already included most of the balcony structure and the northern end of this front on folio 45 recto (D14399).

For other drawings made in the vicinity and an overview of Turner’s coverage of Venice, see the sketchbook’s Introduction.