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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
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Joseph Mallord William Turner The Loggetta and Campanile of San Marco (St Mark's), Venice, from the Porta della Carta of the Palazzo Ducale (Doge's Palace) 1833

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Loggetta and Campanile of San Marco (St Mark's), Venice, from the Porta della Carta of the Palazzo Ducale (Doge's Palace)’ 1833
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 1 Verso:
The Loggetta and Campanile of San Marco (St Mark’s), Venice, from the Porta della Carta of the Palazzo Ducale (Doge’s Palace) 1833
D31929
Turner Bequest CCCXIV 1
Pencil on white laid paper, 109 x 203 mm
Inscribed by C.F. Bell in black ink ‘1’ top left, ascending vertically
Stamped in black ‘CCCXIV – 1’ top left, descending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The page’s 1909 basic Inventory title (‘Buildings, &c.’)1 was amended by Ian Warrell to ‘The Arches of a Balcony’ in 2003, in connection with his concurrent Turner and Venice exhibition at Tate Britain.2 He subsequently recognised the viewpoint of this slight sketch, made with the page turned horizontally, as the Porta della Carta3 between the arcade at the north-west corner of the Palazzo Ducale (Doge’s Palace) on the left and the Basilica of San Marco (St Mark’s on the right), looking west to the Loggetta at the base of the campanile in St Mark’s Square. The key elements are the slight indications of the coupled columns of the Loggetta’s façade directly ahead, and the sequence of vertical dashes marking the first few windows illuminating the tower’s internal staircase. The looser forms to the left of centre may be figures within the arcade, possibly merchants and their goods.
There is a more detailed view from about the same point on folios 2 verso–3 recto (D31831–D31932). Compare also a pencil drawing from nearby in the 1840 Rotterdam to Venice sketchbook (Tate D32435; Turner Bequest CCCXX 88), and a vertical colour study on grey paper from that year, showing the full height of the campanile (Tate D32204; Turner Bequest CCCXVII 19).
One of the studies on folio 20 verso (D31965) shows the Porta della Carta between the church and palace, looking back in this direction from the square. For this sketchbook’s general sequence,4 see its Introduction.
1
Finberg 1909, II, p.1012.
2
Noted October 2003 in Tate registrars’ files.
3
Draft notes of 2010–11, Tate cataloguing files.
4
See George 1984, pp.13–15.
Technical notes:
The recto of the leaf is glued along the shorter edges to folded slips of white paper, in turn glued onto the lilac-red laid free endpaper, to form a bellows-type pocket. This part of the continuous red sheet is watermarked with part of a large heraldic device with a crowned double-headed eagle bearing a shield with the letters ‘F I’. The corresponding front endpaper of the technically similar Venice up to Trento sketchbook (Tate; Turner Bequest CCCXII), used immediately after this one, is watermarked ‘P G’ for Pietro Galvani of Pordenone, near Venice; see the sketchbook’s Introduction for notes on its papers and unorthodox construction.1

Matthew Imms
May 2019

1
See also Peter Bower, Turner’s Later Papers: A Study of the Manufacture, Selection and Use of his Drawing Papers 1820–1851, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1999, p.58.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘The Loggetta and Campanile of San Marco (St Mark’s), Venice, from the Porta della Carta of the Palazzo Ducale (Doge’s Palace) 1833 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, May 2019, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, March 2023, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-the-loggetta-and-campanile-of-san-marco-st-marks-venice-from-r1203608, accessed 24 November 2024.