Joseph Mallord William Turner

The viewpoint is just outside the Porta della Carta entrance to the Palazzo Ducale (Doge’s Palace), looking west-south-west, with the north-west corner of the palace on the left, and the two ancient Byzantine pillars known as the Pilastri Acritani outside the south-west corner of the Basilica of San Marco (St Mark’s) on the right. Beyond to the left, facing the Piazzetta in the morning sunlight, is the Libreria Sansoviniana, with the Procuratie Nouve receding along the south side of the Piazza (St Mark’s Square). Tate D32244 (Turner Bequest CCCXVIII 28) is a contemporary watercolour study looking in the opposite direction from about the same point, through the Porta della Carta itself.1

Ian Warrell has characterised the view:

It is always a moot point as to how much of Turner’s watercolour work was done immediately in front of the subject. D32244, for example, reveals considerable manipulation of proportion and detail, either deliberately or through reliance on pencil studies, making it perhaps less likely to have been produced at the site. In the present instance, the immediacy of the effect of light and the accuracy in placing the various elements suggests that at least a substantial beginning was made on the spot. Of many pencil studies made over the years in this vicinity, compare Tate D32435 (Turner Bequest CCCXX 88) in the 1840 Rotterdam to Venice sketchbook, a horizontal panoramic view from a few steps further on and to the right from an unusual position in the narrow space between the pillars and the church; it looks both south down the Piazzetta and east to the campanile of St Mark’s (as here), but without enough detail to fully inform the present work.