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 > Venice to Ancona Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Inscriptions by Turner ?and Others: Italian Words and Phrases and English Equivalents 1819

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Inscriptions by Turner ?and Others: Italian Words and Phrases and English Equivalents’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 90 Recto:
Inscriptions by Turner ?and Others: Italian Words and Phrases and English Equivalents 1819
D14651
Turner Bequest CLXXVI 86
Pencil on white wove paper, 184 x 111 mm
Partial watermark ‘Allnutt | 18’
Inscribed by Turner ?and others in pencil ‘Dove a la Academia del Belle Arte | Where is the Academ[...] . . Poulestro Fowl Poulet | Talliatela Vermicelli | Dove e l’ academia | delle belle Arti | [...] | 10 w[...]s’ at top
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘86’ top right, ascending vertically (now faint)
Stamped in black ‘CLXXVI – 86’ top right, ascending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The Turner scholar C.F. Bell annotated Finberg’s 1909 Inventory entry (‘MS. Note’): ‘Italian & English phrases’.1 Among more basic food-related vocabulary are two attempts at ‘Dove è l’Accademia di Belle Arti?’ Cecilia Powell has suggested that the second version (as well as some of the other words) is not by Turner;2 although it written in a larger and clearer hand, his writing was widely variable and it may be by him, or by a helpful local. As it is written near one end of the sketchbook outside the main sequence of topographical drawings, it is unclear which art academy it refers to. Views of Venice occupy roughly the first quarter of the book, and Bologna the second (see the Introduction), and institutions in both cities have been proposed.
Ian Warrell has favoured Venice,3 while Cecilia Powell has preferred Bologna, ‘where less English would have been understood’, pointing out that the buildings drawn east of the centre in the Via Zamboni (folio 31 recto; D14543; Turner Bequest CLXXVI 27) were in the vicinity of the city’s Accademia in the Via delle Belle Arti (sic),4 subsequently separated from the collection forming the Pinacoteca Nazionale but still sharing premises. James Hamilton has noted both possibilities.5

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.519.
2
See Powell 1984, p.407.
3
See Warrell 2003, p.17, and Warrell 2005, p.20.
4
See Powell 1984, pp.83–4.
5
See Hamilton 2009, p.42; see also Hamilton 2008, p.44.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Inscriptions by Turner ?and Others: Italian Words and Phrases and English Equivalents 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-inscriptions-by-turner-and-others-italian-words-and-phrases-r1186387, accessed 13 May 2025.