Joseph Mallord William Turner

Finberg later annotated his unspecific 1909 Inventory entry (‘Church, Campanile, &c., with boats’): ‘S. Giorgio’.1 The Turner scholar C.F. Bell similarly marked another copy: ‘San Giorgio’.2 The view, drawn horizontally, is indeed of San Giorgio Maggiore, on the island of the same name. Its main axis runs west-north-west to east-south-east, with the upper view here centred on the classical entrance portico at its west end, facing the Bacino, seen to the south from off one of the island’s two harbour lighthouses.

A boatload of monks is passing, as drawn and annotated by Turner, ‘with w[hite] hoods’, although a short earlier adjective beginning with ‘B’, is less clear; it might indicate ‘Brown’ habits, or the ‘Ben[edictine]’ order of the island’s monastery. A contemporary view of churches along the nearby Canale della Giudecca apparently includes notes of other religious orders (Tate D32146; Turner Bequest CCCXVI 9).

Below is a less detailed elevation of the north side of the church, the base of the campanile and the three rounded gables of the building immediately to its north-east. This possibly informed a loose, atmospheric watercolour of the church from that direction (Tate D32161; Turner Bequest CCCXVI 24).3

The upper stages and spire of the campanile beyond are continued from the gutter on folio 20 verso (D31830); finding that the rest of the corresponding side of that page was already taken up with sketches, Turner would have rolled the fore-edge of the present leaf right back to align the two parts of the drawing.

Technical notes:

There is a slight but definite crease about half way down the page, parallel with the gutter and fore-edge; this presumably occurred when Turner briefly pushed the page back to continue the drawing on the previous leaf, as discussed above.