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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
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Joseph Mallord William Turner The Basilica 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 Basilica 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 3 Recto:
The Basilica and Campanile of San Marco (St Mark’s), Venice, from the Porta della Carta of the Palazzo Ducale (Doge’s Palace) 1833
D31932
Turner Bequest CCCXIV 3
Pencil on white laid paper, 109 x 203 mm
Inscribed by C.F. Bell in black ink ‘3’ bottom left, descending vertically
Stamped in black ‘CCCXIV – 3’ bottom left, descending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The Turner scholar C.F. Bell annotated Finberg’s 1909 Inventory entry (‘The Piazzetta of St. Mark’s, with part of Ducal Palace on left’): ‘from the Porta della Carta looking towards the loggetta’.1 He also marked a copy of Finberg’s 1930 book In Venice with Turner in the same way.2 The page’s title was amended by Ian Warrell to ‘The Piazzetta of St Mark’s, with Part of Ducal Palace on Left’ in 2003, in connection with his concurrent Turner and Venice exhibition at Tate Britain.3 The drawing was made with the page turned horizontally.
The viewpoint is the Porta della Carta, set back between the arcade at the north-west corner of the Palazzo Ducale (Doge’s Palace) on the left, with a sketchy indication of the sculptural group of the Judgement of Solomon above the corner capital, 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 two free-standing ancient Byzantine pillars known as the Pilastri Acritani are in front of the church on the right, with the Roman porphyry sculpture of the Four Tetrarchs set into the nearest corner of St Mark’s in the foreground (only three being visible from this angle). The view is continued upwards across the gutter, roughly a third of the way across folio 2 verso opposite (D31931), where there is a separate study of a boat.
There is a slight view from about the same point on folio 1 verso (D31929). 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), both from a little further to the right. 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, including Hardy George’s broad overview,4 see its Introduction.

Matthew Imms
May 2019

1
Undated MS note by Bell (died 1966) in copy of Finberg 1909, Prints and Drawings Room, Tate Britain, II, p.1012.
2
Undated MS note by Bell in copy of A.J. Finberg, In Venice with Turner, London 1930, Study Room, British Museum, London, p.168, as transcribed by Ian Warrell (Tate cataloguing files, as ‘before 1936’).
3
Noted October 2003 in Tate registrars’ files.
4
See George 1984, pp.13–15.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘The Basilica 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-basilica-and-campanile-of-san-marco-st-marks-venice-from-r1203611, accessed 22 July 2024.