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

As noted by Cecilia Powell, this detailed architectural study depicts the Piazza del Campo, Siena’s principal square.1 Turning his sketchbook horizontally for a more panoramic effect, Turner looked south-east towards the city’s magnificent stone and red-brick town hall, the Palazzo Pubblico, a Gothic palace built in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries.2 Showcasing Turner’s skilled architectural draughtsmanship, the tiers, turrets and projections are carefully outlined, and the doorways, arched windows and crenellations articulated with characteristic economy. Comparatively detailed sections of the building serve to indicate the overall scheme, whereas other parts are numbered or left blank to show the repetition of architectural features. For example, a row of first-storey windows is implied with the inscription ‘12’.

The tower to the left is the palace’s fourteenth-century campanile, the Torre del Mangia. It skims the top of the page as though to emphasise its impressive height, which exceeds 87 metres.3 As detailed here by Turner, the stone parapet and belfry towards the top are crenellated. A separate ‘exploded’ view to the right suggests Turner’s interest in aspects of its design and construction. The upper inscription is partly illegible but may be an abbreviation of ‘Lippo Memmi’, the architect tasked with designing the top part of the tower. This annotation hints at Turner’s curiosity towards the site’s architectural history, which perhaps led him to consult a guidebook.4

Several enlarged architectural features float across the top of the page: details of window tracery; an entablature; a side profile of an entrance portico; and the deconstructed parapet of the Torre del Mangia, mentioned earlier. The surrounding buildings in the square are also detailed, their windows and decorative features rendered as rows of dots, lines and other geometrical markings. Continuing the vista cut off by the border of the page, Turner included another row of buildings in the top-left corner above.

The time-saving devices used here, such as inconsistent detailing, enlarged architectural features and numbering to indicate repetition, were deployed to similar effect by Turner in a view of the Piazza del Duomo in Pisa: see the Genoa and Florence sketchbook from the present 1828 tour (Tate D21527; Turner Bequest CCXXXIII 59a). A notable difference is the absence of figures in the present view of Siena.

For further commentary on Turner’s first visit to Siena in 1828, together with a list of relevant works in the sketchbook, see under folio 10 verso (D21607).