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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1836-47 Modern painter > Venice, Austria and Southern Germany ... > Venice and Botzen Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner The Palazzo Ducale (Doge's Palace), Venice, from near the Ponte della Paglia, with the Piazzetta and Santa Maria della Salute Beyond 1840

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Palazzo Ducale (Doge's Palace), Venice, from near the Ponte della Paglia, with the Piazzetta and Santa Maria della Salute Beyond’ 1840
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 13 Verso:
The Palazzo Ducale (Doge’s Palace), Venice, from near the Ponte della Paglia, with the Piazzetta and Santa Maria della Salute Beyond 1840
D31816
Turner Bequest CCCXIII 13a
Pencil on cream wove paper, 123 x 173 mm
Partial watermark ‘tman’
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Finberg later annotated his misleading 1909 Inventory entry (‘The Molo, looking towards S. Giorgio’): ‘Ponte Paglia, D’s Pal., with Dogana in distance: shipping in foregd’.1 The Turner scholar C.F. Bell marked another copy, crossing out ‘S. Giorgio’ and adding: ‘the Salute | various sketches’.2
There are two main views here, drawn with the page turned horizontally. In the more detailed, across the centre, the Palazzo Ducale (Doge’s Palace) is seen on the right above the Ponte della Paglia from the broad quay marking the beginning of the Riva degli Schiavoni, with the Libreria Sansoviniana and Zecca beyond the columns at the Molo entrance to the Piazzetta at the centre. In the distance are the domes of Santa Maria della Salute above the porch of the Dogana at the entrance to the Grand Canal to the west-south-west. Compare the more detailed rendering in the 1819 Milan to Venice sketchbook (Tate D14414; Turner Bequest CLXXV 52a).
Above is a slighter version of the same scene, while below, carried across the gutter from folio 14 recto opposite (D31817), is the upper part of a study of moored boats.

Matthew Imms
September 2018

1
Undated MS note by Finberg (died 1939) in interleaved copy of Finberg 1909, Prints and Drawings Room, Tate Britain, II, opposite p.1010.
2
Undated MS note by Bell (died 1966) in copy of Finberg 1909, Prints and Drawings Room, Tate Britain, II, p.1010.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘The Palazzo Ducale (Doge’s Palace), Venice, from near the Ponte della Paglia, with the Piazzetta and Santa Maria della Salute Beyond 1840 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, September 2018, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2019, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-the-palazzo-ducale-doges-palace-venice-from-near-the-ponte-r1196710, accessed 23 November 2024.