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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > First Italian Tour 1819-20 > Venice to Ancona Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner The Redentore and San Giacomo Churches on the Isola della Giudecca, Venice, with Santa Maria del Rosario (I Gesuati) across the Canale della Giudecca 1819

Image 1 of 2
  • Enhanced image
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Redentore and San Giacomo Churches on the Isola della Giudecca, Venice, with Santa Maria del Rosario (I Gesuati) across the Canale della Giudecca’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 18 Verso:
The Redentore and San Giacomo Churches on the Isola della Giudecca, Venice, with Santa Maria del Rosario (I Gesuati) across the Canale della Giudecca 1819
D14522
Turner Bequest CLXXVI 18a
Pencil on white wove paper, 111 x 184 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘St Martha | Martha’ below right of centre, and ‘Do[...]’ towards top right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Finberg subsequently annotated his 1909 Inventory entry (‘On the Giudecca, with “S. Marta.”’): ‘Redentore. S Marta’.1 The Turner scholar C.F. Bell wrote in another copy: ‘Redentore to l. Gesuati to r’.2 Bell marked Finberg’s similar text in In Venice with Turner (1930): ‘Redentore on left, Gesuati on right’.3
The viewpoint is along or off the Fondamenta della Croce, looking south-west to the dome and buttresses of the Redentore church, with the campanile of the lost church of San Giacomo (suppressed in 1806 and demolished in 18374) to its right. Beyond stretches the Canale della Giudecca to the west-north-west. On its far side are the dome and twin campanili of the church of Santa Maria del Rosario (the Gesuati). Turner’s ‘St Martha | Martha’ is a slight red herring, referring not to that church but to the Punta di Santa Marta, associated with the former church of that name at what was then (prior to modern harbour developments) the very western tip of Venice further down that side of the canal.
There is a view looking north from about the same point on folio 19 recto opposite (D14523), together with a reprise of the present one. Ian Warrell has observed in relation to the two pages: ‘It was not until his final visit [in 1840] that Turner really assimilated the area as one of direct relevance to his art. He had made his first tentative survey in 1819, but then ventured no further than the church of the Redentore.’5 For other drawings made in the vicinity, see the sketchbook’s Introduction.

Matthew Imms
March 2017

1
Undated MS note by A.J. Finberg (died 1939) in copy of Finberg 1909, Tate Britain Prints and Drawings Room, I, p.517.
2
Undated MS note by C.F. Bell (died 1966) in copy of Finberg 1909, Tate Britain Prints and Drawings Room, I, p.517.
3
Undated MS note by Bell (before 1936) in copy of Finberg 1930, Prints and Drawings Study Room, British Museum, London, p.167, as transcribed by Ian Warrell (undated notes, Tate catalogue files).
4
For history and images see Jeff Cotton, ‘The Lost Churches’, The Churches of Venice, accessed 4 January 2017, http://churchesofvenice.co.uk/demolished.htm#giud.
5
Warrell 2003, pp.179, 264 note 2.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘The Redentore and San Giacomo Churches on the Isola della Giudecca, Venice, with Santa Maria del Rosario (I Gesuati) across the Canale della Giudecca 1819 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, March 2017, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, July 2017, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-the-redentore-and-san-giacomo-churches-on-the-isola-della-r1186257, accessed 24 April 2024.