Joseph Mallord William Turner

Vignette Study of Florence: Palazzo Vecchio and Loggia dei Lanzi; ?for Rogers’s ‘Italy’

c.1826–36

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In Tate Britain

Prints and Drawings Room

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Artist
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Part of
Watercolours Related to Samuel Rogers’s Italy
Medium
Watercolour on paper
Dimensions
Support: 392 x 293 mm
Collection
Tate
Acquisition
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Reference
D27539
Turner Bequest CCLXXX 22

Catalogue entry

The style and content of this unfinished vignette link it most directly to a preliminary study that Turner produced to illustrate Rogers’s chapter on Florence in Rogers’s Italy (see Tate D27612; Turner Bequest CCLXXX 95). Both studies are executed in a light wash and centre around a view of the Palazzo Vecchio. Turner here shows the Palazzo Vecchio and Loggia dei Lanzi, as well as the Fountain of Neptune in the foreground. Piggott has suggested that the composition may be based on a sketch from the Rome and Florence sketchbook, 1819 (see Tate D16554; Turner Bequest CXCI 37).1
The final composition chosen to illustrate Florence in the publication shows a traditional view of the city from Fiesole (see Tate D27673; Turner Bequest CCLXXX).
1
Piggott 1993, p.95, erroneously as connected to Rogers’s Poems.
Technical notes:
Watermark ‘J. Whatman / Turkey Mill’
Verso:
Inscribed by unknown hands in pencil ‘CCLXXX 22’ lower right and ‘AB 117 P | M’ bottom right

Meredith Gamer
August 2006

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