The drawing continues across folio 4 recto opposite (
D14494). Finberg subsequently annotated his 1909
Inventory entry (‘View from the Mola [sic], with S. Maria della Salute and Dogana in the distance’) to read: ‘View from beyond the Molo’.
1 He also elaborated: ‘Redentore. Dog
a. Salute, Mint, Columns, Doges Pal, Prison, Campanile, with scaffolding &c. Ponte del Vin in foreg
d. Caserna. Danieli’s. Note wooded hutchment far end of Danieli’s – now gone & shape of bridge – now altered see [Antonio] Quadri’s views [engraved in 1831]’.
2 The Turner scholar C.F. Bell wrote in another copy: ‘Redentore l. Hotel Daniell r’.
3The viewpoint is the Riva degli Schiavoni. On this page the prospect is south-west across the Bacino and Giudecca Canal to the domed church of the Redentore and the campanile of the adjacent church of San Giacomo, demolished in 1837,
4 on the left. On the right to the west-south-west are the cursorily indicated porch of the Dogana and domes of the church of Santa Maria della Salute, covered in various drawings in the contemporary
Milan to Venice sketchbook (see for example Tate
D14438; Turner Bequest CLXXV 64a). In the light of more detailed treatments in the other book as compared with the Venice views here, Finberg took the present drawing as an example:
The whole scene is lightly touched in, but most of the essential features of each building are ignored. One feels that Turner was now sketching a scene composed of familiar features, and that his attention was directed to the scene as a whole rather than to its parts. I have no doubt that when he made this sketch he was toying with the idea of painting a picture of this view which would have challenged Canaletto on his own ground.
5For other drawings made in the vicinity, see the sketchbook’s Introduction.
