Joseph Mallord William Turner

The Turner scholar C.F. Bell annotated Finberg’s 1909 Inventory entry (‘In the Cannaregio, with the Palazzo Labia and S. Geremia on the left, with the Ghetto in distance; also group of gondolas’): ‘Ponte delle Guglie in the middle’.1 Bell similarly marked the entry in Finberg’s 1930 In Venice with Turner.2

Looking north from the Grand Canal along the Riva di Biasio, the view continues across most of folio 88 verso opposite (D14482; Turner Bequest CLXXV 87a), where the church of San Geremia is shown. The statue below it, seen on the left here, occupies a similar position today, but the balustrade and steps have been replaced. Above rises the Palazzo Labia, as labelled by Turner, facing the Cannaregio Canal, with the Ponte delle Guglie just beyond. The general arrangement of the buildings beyond and in the right foreground remains much the same, the tallest one shown complete being the Palazzo Emo a San Leonardo.

Finberg noted that this view and a few others on adjacent pages around the north-western end of the Grand Canal ‘complete Turner’s studies of this part of Venice’.3 For other drawings made in the vicinity and an overview of Turner’s coverage of Venice, see the sketchbook’s Introduction.