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 > Milan to Venice Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner The Piazza della Frutta, Padua 1819

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Piazza della Frutta, Padua’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 36 Recto:
The Piazza della Frutta, Padua 1819
D14381
Turner Bequest CLXXV 36
Pencil on white wove paper, 112 x 185 mm
Partial watermark ‘lee | 13’
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘[?B Frutti]’ centre left, and ‘X’ three times right of centre, on buildings
Inscribed by John Ruskin in blue ink ‘36’ top right and ‘300’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CLXXV 36’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The Turner scholar C.F. Bell annotated Finberg’s basic 1909 Inventory entry (‘Towers and other buildings’): ‘Palazzo della Ragione Padua’.1 However, Bell marked the augmented entries for other pages in this sketchbook in Finberg’s 1930 In Venice with Turner: ‘Vicenza’.2
Bell was correct in his Padua identification, with the Palazzo della Ragione, Padua’s town hall, seen on the right and the Piazza della Frutta (alternatively Piazza dei Frutti) in the foreground, looking east. The medieval Torre degli Anziani, rising at the centre, has since lost its cupola. The Torre del Bo, further off in the centre, is now even more truncated.
For other Padua views, see under folio 35 recto (D14380).

Matthew Imms
March 2017

1
Undated MS note by C.F. Bell (died 1966) in copy of Finberg 1909, Tate Britain Prints and Drawings Room, I, p.513.
2
Undated MS note by Bell (before 1936) in copy of A.J. Finberg, In Venice with Turner, London 1930, Prints and Drawings Study Room, British Museum, London, p.[?]163, as transcribed by Ian Warrell (undated notes, Tate catalogue files).

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘The Piazza della Frutta, Padua 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-piazza-della-frutta-padua-r1186494, accessed 19 September 2024.