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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1830-35 Annual tourist > Southern Germany, Austria and Venice ... > Venice Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner The Molo, Venice, with the Palazzo Ducale (Doge's Palace) and the Columns at the Entrance to the Piazzetta, and the Dogana and Santa Maria della Salute Beyond; a Sailing Boat; ?the Dome of the Redentore 1833

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Molo, Venice, with the Palazzo Ducale (Doge's Palace) and the Columns at the Entrance to the Piazzetta, and the Dogana and Santa Maria della Salute Beyond; a Sailing Boat; ?the Dome of the Redentore’ 1833
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 6 Recto:
The Molo, Venice, with the Palazzo Ducale (Doge’s Palace) and the Columns at the Entrance to the Piazzetta, and the Dogana and Santa Maria della Salute Beyond; a Sailing Boat; ?the Dome of the Redentore 1833
D31938
Turner Bequest CCCXIV 6
Pencil on white laid paper, 109 x 203 mm
Inscribed by C.F. Bell in black ink ‘6’ bottom left, descending vertically
Stamped in black ‘CCCXIV – 6’ bottom left, descending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Finberg later annotated his 1909 Inventory entry (‘The Molo and Punta della Salute’): ‘Dogana & Salute, from Ponte Paglia’.1 The page’s title was amended by Ian Warrell to ‘Looking along the Molo towards the Piazzetta, with the Dogana and the Salute in the Distance’ in 2003, in connection with his concurrent Turner and Venice exhibition at Tate Britain.2 The drawing was made with the page turned horizontally.
The view is westwards along the Molo quay from near the south-east corner of the Palazzo Ducale (Doge’s Palace), with the columns at the entrance to the Piazzetta beyond the palace’s loosely articulated Gothic south front, and the east front of the Libreria Sansoviniana beyond, with the cupola of the adjacent Zecca above it. In the distance towards the left, across the Bacino at the mouth of the Grand Canal, are the porch of the Dogana and the domes of Santa Maria della Salute.
The south-west corner of the palace, towards the top centre, is briefly continued upwards across the gutter on folio 5 verso opposite (D31936), where there is an easterly view from much the same point. The subject was a familiar one; see for example Tate D14414 (Turner Bequest CLXXV 52a) in the 1819 Milan to Venice sketchbook. Compare also Richard Parkes Bonington’s oil painting Venice: Ducal Palace with a Religious Procession, exhibited in 1828 (Tate N05789), which shows the same prospect from a little further off, as in the variant study on folio 7 recto here (D31939).
On the right is a separate slight sketch of what seems to be a cluster of boats with a raised sail and masts, likely related to those shown within the nearby view on the opposite page. For other studies in this sketchbook showing local shipping in isolation or particularly prominently in topographical views of the city, see under folio 2 verso (D31931). The small detail of a dome at the bottom left perhaps represents that of the Redentore church, on the Isola della Giudecca to the south-west, not far beyond the left-hand edge of the main view.
For this sketchbook’s general sequence, including Hardy George’s broad overview,3 see its Introduction.
1
Undated MS note by Finberg (died 1939) in interleaved copy of Finberg 1909, Prints and Drawings Room, Tate Britain, II, opposite p.1012; see also Finberg 1930, p.168.
2
Noted October 2003 in Tate registrars’ files.
3
See George 1984, pp.13–15.
Verso:
Blank

Matthew Imms
May 2019

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘The Molo, Venice, with the Palazzo Ducale (Doge’s Palace) and the Columns at the Entrance to the Piazzetta, and the Dogana and Santa Maria della Salute Beyond; a Sailing Boat; ?the Dome of the Redentore 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-molo-venice-with-the-palazzo-ducale-doges-palace-and-the-r1203616, accessed 22 July 2024.