J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > First Italian Tour 1819-20 > Milan to Venice Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Buildings, Probably near Milan Cathedral 1819

Image 1 of 2
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Buildings, Probably near Milan Cathedral’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 5 Verso:
Buildings, Probably near Milan Cathedral 1819
D14334
Turner Bequest CLXXV 5a
Pencil on white wove paper, 185 x 112 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘[?Co...o]’ above left of centre, on ?sign in archway
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The Turner scholar C.F. Bell annotated Finberg’s 1909 Inventory entry (‘Part of the Cathedral, Milan’), crossing out the title and writing ‘houses Milan’.1 Drawn with the page turned vertically, at the top is part of a façade of what may be shops or public buildings. Below, orientated in line with the sketchbook’s foliation, is another row of shops or houses drawn although the buildings right up to the gutter, as if as a continuation from another page, although the drawing on folio 6 recto (D14335) opposite is an unrelated Milan view. As Ian Warrell has suggested, the details may have been noted in the Piazza del Duomo near Milan Cathedral,2 as shown on adjacent pages.
See under folio 2 recto (D14328) for other Milan views.

Matthew Imms
March 2017

1
Undated MS note by C.F. Bell (died 1966) in copy of Finberg 1909, Tate Britain Prints and Drawings Room, I, p.512.
2
Undated note by Ian Warrell in Tate catalogue files.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Buildings, Probably near Milan Cathedral 1819 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, March 2017, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, July 2017, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-buildings-probably-near-milan-cathedral-r1186447, accessed 26 April 2024.