
Not on display
- Artist
- Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
- Medium
- Oil paint on canvas
- Dimensions
- Support: 914 × 1219 mm
frame: 1290 × 1595 × 90 mm - Collection
- Tate
- Acquisition
- Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
- Reference
- N04446
Display caption
Although this painting is unfinished, it is possible to imagine how Turner would have developed it. The top half of the Doge's Palace and the Campanile of S.Marco are recognisable, but Turner abandoned the picture before bringing it to the detailed finish of other Venetian subjects dating from the 1830s. Among the group of figures in the foreground on the left is the Doge, depicted in the act of wedding the sea through the ritualised gift of a gold ring. The ceremony had ceased to take place by Turner's time, which implies that he intended the picture to be an historical subject.
Gallery label, September 2004
Does this text contain inaccurate information or language that you feel we should improve or change? We would like to hear from you.
Catalogue entry
501. [N04446] Venice, the Piazzetta with the Ceremony of the Doge marrying the Sea c. 1835
THE TATE GALLERY, LONDON (4446)
Canvas, 36 × 48 (91·5 × 122)
Coll. Turner Bequest 1856 (136, one of 36 each 4'0" × 3'0"; identified 1946 by chalk number on back); transferred to the Tate Gallery 1948.
Exh. Rotterdam 1955 (58); New York 1966 (12, repr. p. 36); Edinburgh 1968 (8).
Lit. Davies 1946, pp. 156, 188 n. 14; Gowing 1966, p. 36, repr.; Herrmann 1975, p. 47, pl. 156; Wilton 1979, p. 224.
Formerly given a solely topographical title, this picture has been identified by Lawrence Gowing as a work in progress on the subject of the Doge symbolically marrying the Adriatic, which Turner could have known from sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Venetian examples. Turner seems to have abandoned the picture at the moment of drastically altering the roof-line of the Doge's Palace on the right.
Tentatively datable to the mid 1830s on account of its relatively strong colouring and thickly applied paint. In addition, Turner seems to have abandoned his standard 3 ft by 4 ft format for Venetian exhibits after 1836, but see Nos. 505 {N02068] and 506 [N04660], and also the upright No. 368.
Published in:
Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll, The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner, revised ed., New Haven and London 1984
Explore
- architecture(30,960)
- industrial(2,075)
-
- canal(589)
- townscapes / man-made features(21,603)
-
- waterfront(1,186)
- crowd(646)
- Italy(4,473)
You might like
-
Joseph Mallord William Turner Venice, for Rogers’s ‘Italy’
c.1826–7 -
Joseph Mallord William Turner The Piazzetta, Palazzo Ducale (Doge’s Palace) and New Prisons from the Bacino, Venice, with Moored Boats
1840 -
Joseph Mallord William Turner Bridge of Sighs, Ducal Palace and Custom-House, Venice: Canaletti Painting
exhibited 1833 -
Richard Parkes Bonington View of the Piazzetta near the Square of St Mark, Venice
1827, exhibited 1828 -
Joseph Mallord William Turner Venice, the Bridge of Sighs
exhibited 1840 -
Joseph Mallord William Turner St Benedetto, Looking towards Fusina
exhibited 1843 -
Joseph Mallord William Turner The Sun of Venice Going to Sea
exhibited 1843 -
Joseph Mallord William Turner Venice - Maria della Salute
exhibited 1844 -
Joseph Mallord William Turner Venice Quay, Ducal Palace
exhibited 1844 -
Joseph Mallord William Turner Venice - Noon
exhibited 1845 -
Joseph Mallord William Turner Venice - Sunset, a Fisher
exhibited 1845 -
Joseph Mallord William Turner Venice with the Salute
c.1840–5 -
Joseph Mallord William Turner The Rialto, Venice
c.1820 -
Richard Parkes Bonington Venice: Ducal Palace with a Religious Procession
exhibited 1828 -
After Joseph Mallord William Turner Venice
1830