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

Continuous at first glance, there are actually two separate subjects, both drawn with the page turned horizontally. Taking up the full width of the page is what appears to be a single prospect of a town or group of buildings including domes, a cross and a tower, likely all part of a church or monastery complex, with less distinctive structures at either side.

Finberg tentatively read Turner’s scrawled single word across the foreground, perhaps a road or river, as ‘Melk’,1 although it might signify another place name or simply a ‘Mill’. The imposing monastery at Melk, with its Baroque dome and elaborate twin bell towers, stands high on a rock overlooking the River Danube midway between Linz and Vienna. Turner had drawn it clearly in the Salzburg and Danube sketchbook as he passed downstream on the earlier Austrian leg of the present tour (Tate D30270–D30272; Turner Bequest CCC 72, 72a, 73), and again in the subsequent Vienna up to Venice book (D31461; CCCXI 23a). He would return in 1840; see the Trieste, Graz and Danube book (D30050; CCXCIX 25a).

The present scene, in a book apparently begun (and likely bought) in Venice and used on a distinct route homewards through northern Italy and onwards via Austria and Bavaria, seems unrelated to any of those studies, and likely shows an aspect of one of the Italian towns or cities recorded somewhat unsystematically on other pages (see the Introduction for the overall itinerary).

Adding to the confusion, Finberg seems to have read the whole page as a single scene of ‘Buildings on hill’;2 in fact, the elevated features lightly framed by pencil lines at the top left comprise a separate study of the hilltop Castel Firmiano (Schloss Sigmundskron) near Bolzano (Bozen), seen to the south from the Adige (Etsch) Valley. For numerous other drawings in that neighbourhood, see under folio 1 verso (D31598).