Joseph Mallord William Turner

Campo Castelforte San Rocco, Venice, with the Scuola Grande di San Rocco beside the Rio della Frescada

1840

Image released under Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND (3.0 Unported)

License this image

In Tate Britain

Prints and Drawings Room

View by appointment
Artist
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Part of
Venice and Botzen Sketchbook
Medium
Graphite on paper
Dimensions
Support: 123 × 173 mm
Collection
Tate
Acquisition
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Reference
D31862
Turner Bequest CCCXIII 37

Catalogue entry

Finberg later annotated his 1909 Inventory entry (‘Castel forte S. Rocco’): ‘Scuola di San Rocco’.1 The Turner scholar C.F. Bell marked another with the same words.2 With the page turned horizontally, the view is south-east along the broad quay of the Campo Castelforte, beside the narrow Rio della Frescada. Beyond the corner of the building in the foreground, the left-hand side is taken up with the south end of the Scuola di San Rocco. The loosely rendered detail at the top right may show the vault of the canalside arcade in the main drawing.
See also folio 36 verso opposite (D31861), showing the view from outside the front of the Scuola. Evidence of Turner’s exploring Venice away from the Grand Canal and the well-known San Marco (St Mark’s) and waterfront settings are relatively uncommon, and Ian Warrell has suggested that on this occasion he was visiting the Scuola’s renowned cycle of paintings by Tintoretto and other Venetian masters.3

Matthew Imms
September 2018

1
Undated MS note by Finberg (died 1939) in interleaved copy of Finberg 1909, Prints and Drawings Room, Tate Britain, II, p.1011.
2
Undated MS note by Bell (died 1966) in copy of Finberg 1909, Prints and Drawings Room, Tate Britain, II, p.1011.
3
See Warrell 2003, pp.63, 161, 262 note 62, 264 note 20.

Read full Catalogue entry

Explore

You might like

Left Right

In the shop

Browse the shop