Joseph Mallord William Turner

Finberg later annotated his 1909 Inventory entry (‘Citadel, from below’): ‘Wurzburg’.1 As Cecilia Powell has noted, the Marienberg fortress is seen here from near St Burkard’s Church,2 looking south-west up the steep hill; the narrow vertical format of the sketch conveys the drama of its uncompromisingly geometric bastions, looming over the houses off Saalgasse.

The fortifications are seen from further off in the same direction in various more conventional views on adjacent pages. For the extensive sequence of Würzburg views in this sketchbook and others elsewhere, see under folio 72 verso (D30596; CCCIII 71).