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

Turner noted inside the front cover of this sketchbook (D41050) that he arrived in Milan at noon on a Wednesday (14 January), complaining of ‘Snow all the way’. This is one of ten works in this sketchbook depicting the city’s celebrated Duomo, formally known as the Basilica cattedrale metropolitana di Santa Maria Nascente. See under folio 10 verso (D21683) for further commentary and a list of relevant views from this sketchbook and Turner’s earlier visit to the city in 1819.

Turner’s vantage point for this study was from the Piazza del Duomo, looking eastwards towards the cathedral’s ornate marble-clad façade. Today, the late nineteenth-century Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II shopping arcades stand in place of the arcaded building to the left. With typical economy, Turner detailed the Gothic tracery, pinnacles and other architectural features on the left side of the cathedral, leaving the right side comparatively blank to indicate symmetrical features. For a more architecturally precise rendering of this subject, executed during Turner’s first Italian tour in 1819, see Matthew Imms’s entry for the Milan to Venice sketchbook in the present catalogue (Tate D14328; Turner Bequest CLXXV 2).