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

Finberg later annotated his 1909 Inventory entry (‘Buildings’): ‘S. Giorgio with Salute above. Ducal Pal. & Campanile, & 2 o[the]r sketches’.1 The Turner scholar C.F. Bell marked another copy: ‘Views from the Lagoon’.2 The page’s title was amended by Ian Warrell to ‘Two Views of San Giorgio Maggiore from the Canale di San Marco, and a Copy of Canaletto’s Etching “La Piera del Bando”’ in 2003, in connection with his concurrent Turner and Venice exhibition at Tate Britain.3 The various elements were drawn with the page turned horizontally.

Over half the space is taken up by a three-part panorama of the city, in two main bands with further buildings above at the outer edge. The first part to be drawn was likely the only one extending across the full width, with the Isola di San Giorgio Maggiore and its domed church and campanile towards the left, aligned so that the domes of Santa Maria della Salute, across the Bacino west-north-west of San Giorgio, appear just to the right of the tower such that all these features seem to form a single mass.

The porch of the Dogana, just this side of the Salute at the entrance to the Grand Canal, may be conflated with the outline of the further of the island’s two lighthouses. Near the centre, above the north side of the canal, are the campanile of Santo Stefano and the spire of San Moisè. The waterfront continues to advance eastwards, with generalised indications of buildings along the Molo including the Palazzo Ducale (Doge’s Palace), with the campanile and the domes of San Marco (St Mark’s) beyond, and what seems to be the outline of the plain campanile of San Zaccaria at the right.

Continuing the prospect at the top centre, vertical strokes reprise San Zaccaria’s tower before the eastern side of Riva degli Schiavoni church of the Pietà is shown with the first church’s dome aligned above it, followed by isolated details of two further campanili in their relative positions on the skyline: Santa Maria Formosa, reduced to a triangular profile, and San Giorgio dei Greci, with its rounded cupola above the belfry. Both are indicated as ‘w[hite]’; whether the slight marks to their right comprise a further note or architectural elements is unclear.

At the right of the lower band is a simplified repetition of the outline of San Giorgio, with what appear to be the domes of the Zitelle and Redentore on the Isola della Giudecca beyond to the west (now largely obscured by trees on the nearer island); the panorama then peters out with loose indications of hills on the mainland across the Lagoon.

Compare the views from nearby on folios 14 verso, 16 recto opposite (possibly from the same spot) and 17 verso (D31953, D31956, D31959), from various distinct points in front of the Giardini Pubblici at the eastern end of Venice. The sketches fall within what was perhaps a single waterborne excursion (folios 10 verso–24 recto; D31945–D31972) out towards the gardens, and then westwards across the Lagoon along the southern shores of the islands of San Giorgio and the Giudecca, before turning back for the Bacino at the heart of the city along the Canale della Giudecca. For this sketchbook’s general sequence, including Hardy George’s broad overview,4 see its Introduction.

At the bottom right, loosely framed by pencil lines, is an unrelated thumbnail sketch. Apparently labelled ‘Canletti’ – compare the title of the 1833 oil Bridge of Sighs, Ducal Palace and Custom-House, Venice: Canaletti painting (Tate N00370),5 exhibited shortly before the present tour – it shows the Piazzetta, looking from the Piazza San Marco (St Mark’s Square), with the Doge’s Palace on the left, the Libreria Sansoviniana on the right, and San Giorgio framed by the rough verticals of the two columns at the Molo entrance. As noted above, Warrell has characterised this as a ‘copy’ of La Piera del Bando, V[enice], a Canaletto etching of about 1735–40;6 its title refers to the stone from which proclamations were issued outside the basilica of St Mark’s, shown in its left foreground, but absent from the present sketch.

The print also excludes the library and shows San Giorgio to the left of both columns; such differences have led Katharine Baetjer, in her survey of the relationship between the two artists’ work, to question Warrell’s specific link to the print, albeit acknowledging Turner’s clear written reference to his predecessor. The subject was indeed ‘one of Canaletto’s favorites, but is so much a part of any visitor’s experience of Venice that Turner need not have required a source other than the view he himself had seen.’7 While noting these reservations, Warrell has nevertheless plausibly pointed out the likely influence of Canaletto in Turner’s choice of other nearby views; see under folio 44 recto (D32011), which may include views taken from prints, perhaps on the same occasion as the present subject.8 Folios 44 verso and 45 recto (D32012–D32013) are direct studies of the buildings around the Piazzetta from similar angles.