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

The Turner scholar C.F. Bell annotated Finberg’s 1909 Inventory entry (‘The Salute, &c.’): ‘all panoramas from a gondola’.1 Drawn with the page turned horizontally, this is a two-part panorama from the Canale della Giudecca, just off or along the quays of the island of the same name a little west of the Zitelle church, seen at the bottom right. In the upper register, towards the left is the campanile of Santo Stefano, beyond the domes of Santa Maria della Salute. To the right of the latter are the Seminario Patriarcale and the Dogana; in turn, to the right of the Dogana’s porch is the lightly outlined campanile of San Marco (St Mark’s), with the domes of the Basilica and the regular outline of the Palazzo Ducale (Doge’s Palace).

Below, the view is continued across the Bacino east along the distant Riva degli Schiavoni, with the dome and campanile of the church of San Giorgio Maggiore on its island beyond the end of the Giudecca and the Zitelle towards the right. Compare the less compressed two-page panorama in the 1819 Venice to Ancona sketchbook (Tate D14520–D14521; Turner Bequest CLXXVI 17a–18), and the skyline on folio 17 verso of the present book (D31824).

Folio 31 opposite (D31850) shows the main elements again from further west. Ian Warrell has noted that 1840 Giudecca studies such as those on folios 17 recto (D32823) and 30 verso–33 recto (D31849–D31854) here, and in the Venice; Passau to Würzburg sketchbook (Tate D31288–D31293; Turner Bequest CCCX 6a–9), show how Turner ‘really began to see that this previously neglected quarter offered original ways of seeing Venice’.2

Technical notes:

There is some staining at the top and bottom left corners.