Despite recognising the subject as the ‘Ducal Palace and Salute, Venice’, Finberg placed this work in a large grouping of ‘Miscellaneous: black and white’ drawings on ‘White Paper’ in his 1909
Inventory,
1 rather than within the main section of ‘Venice: Miscellaneous’ studies on ‘White paper, &c.’ (Turner Bequest CCCXVI),
2 presumably on account of its slightness. There is a nearby view on the recto (
D43231).
Close inspection though the heavy staining and rubbing reveals a loosely rendered view from the Bacino, looking towards the south-east corner of the Palazzo Ducale (Doge’s Palace) on the right, with the campanile of San Marco (St Mark’s) aligned above it, suggesting a viewpoint quite a long way east off the Riva degli Schiavoni, about level with the Pietà church. The church of Santa Maria della Salute is shown on the left, south of the entrance to the Grand Canal, roughly indicated on two scales. The drawing was perhaps made from memory or as an ad hoc compositional study.
This is among the most familiar views in Venice, and Turner made many more detailed drawings and watercolours from the Bacino and the waterways around it (gathered in a parallel subsection of watercolour studies); compare for example the colour study on grey paper showing the same elements from nearer to the palace (Tate
D32180; Turner Bequest CCCXVII 1).
The present sheet is here tentatively placed among the generally much more developed Venetian watercolours and drawings linked more securely to the 1840 tour.
