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

The upper half of this page features two panoramic views of Florence. As Cecilia Powell has observed, Turner’s vantage point was near the present-day Ponte San Niccolò, which crosses the River Arno to the east of the city.1 The medieval bridge depicted in the upper view is the Ponte alle Grazie, which connects the Santa Croce area on the north bank to Oltrarno on the south. This bridge is replaced with the Ponte Vecchio in the lower view. To the right of the bridge in both vistas is the Torre di Arnolfo, part of the Palazzo Vecchio, the top of which spills over onto folio 2 verso opposite (D21415) in the upper view. The Basilica of Santa Croce also features in both views. The lower study terminates to the right with the Duomo, a landmark cropped out of the variant study beneath. To the left of the bridge is a stretch of the southern Oltrarno district, including the rectangular form of the fourteenth-century Porta San Niccolò, part of the city’s defensive fortifications.

These views of Florence are out of sequence with the overall itinerary embodied by the sketchbook (see the Introduction), which begins near Genoa and ends near Livorno and Florence. For a general commentary on Turner’s second visit to Florence in 1828, his first encounter with the city in 1819, and a list of relevant works in the present sketchbook, see under D21415.