This unusual composition may be a capriccio of various Venetian elements. The viewpoint is a capacious vaulted arcade with at least four bays, with gondolas and figures apparently beyond and between columns rising from the water and supporting round-headed arches. The illuminated space within three of the arches appears to be articulated with smaller door or window arches, suggesting the torchlit canalside porch of one of the great Grand Canal palazzi such as the Ca’ d’Oro, Palazzo Dolfin Manin, Fondaco dei Turchi or Fondaco dei Tedeschi.
The fourth arch, at the left, is open, with steps perhaps leading to a courtyard or calle, and a distant spire, brightly lit against a dark blue sky suggesting a clear moonlit night. This could be intended as the familiar campanile of San Marco (St Mark’s).
Numerous contemporary Venetian studies on toned papers use the framing device of an arch or arcade to concentrate attention on real or imagined spaces beyond, whether inside or outside and by day or night, including one showing the view out to a moonlit canal from a dark Gothic Arcade (Tate
D32246; Turner Bequest CCCXVIII 27); see also
D32226,
D32227,
D32239,
D32245,
D32247,
D32252,
D32255 and
D36089 (CCCXVIII 7, 8, 20, 26, 28, CCCXIX 4, 7, CCCLXIV 243),
1 and compare the view of the arch-like Bridge of Sighs above a starlit canal in the present grouping (
D32253; CCCXIX 5).
Finberg’s ‘9’ in his
Inventory entry
2 refers to Turner’s ink number on the verso (
D40322), where there is also a slight, unrelated Venetian subject in white chalk.
