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 > Rome and Florence Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Florence from the East, with the Duomo and Torre della Zecca 1819

Image 1 of 2
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Florence from the East, with the Duomo and Torre della Zecca’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 61 Recto:
Florence from the East, with the Duomo and Torre della Zecca 1819
D16587
Turner Bequest CXCI 61
Pencil on white wove paper, 113 x 189 mm
Inscribed by ?John Ruskin in red ink ‘61’ bottom right [very faint]
Stamped in black ‘CXCI 61’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This sketch represents part of a view of Florence from the east.1 Turner’s viewpoint is the southern bank of the River Arno near present-day Ponte San Niccolò, looking downstream (west) towards Ponte alle Grazie. The composition continues on the opposite sheet of the double-page spread, see folio 60 verso (D16586), but visible on this side are, from left to right, the tower of the Palazzo Vecchio, the Church of Santa Croce, the campanile and dome of the Duomo. Interrupting the flow of the river across the foreground is a weir, the Pescaia di San Niccolò, whilst visible on the right-hand bank is the Torre della Zecca, part of the former medieval gate, the surviving part of which stands in present-day Piazza Piave.
A similar view was depicted by the eighteenth-century vedute artist Giuseppe Zocchi (1711–1767), although as Powell has discussed, Turner seems to have been unaware of Zocchi’s work.2

Nicola Moorby
January 2011

1
First identified by Powell 1984, p.430.
2
See Veduta di una parte di Firenze presa fuori della Porta a S. Niccolo presso al Fiume Arno, reproduced in Vues de Florence et de Toscane d’après Giuseppe Zocchi, exhibition catalogue, Cabinet des Estampes Musée d’Art et d’Historique Genève 1974, as pl.7, L’Arno Depuis le Ponte San Niccolo vers L’Aval.

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘Florence from the East, with the Duomo and Torre della Zecca 1819 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, January 2011, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2012, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-florence-from-the-east-with-the-duomo-and-torre-della-zecca-r1138480, accessed 26 May 2025.