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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1836-47 Modern painter > Venice, Austria and Southern Germany ... > Venice and Botzen Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner The Basilica of San Marco (St Mark's) above the Scala dei Giganti (Giants' Staircase) of the Palazzo Ducale (Doge's Palace), with the Piazza through the Porta della Carta 1840

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Basilica of San Marco (St Mark's) above the Scala dei Giganti (Giants' Staircase) of the Palazzo Ducale (Doge's Palace), with the Piazza through the Porta della Carta’ 1840
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 18 Recto:
The Basilica of San Marco (St Mark’s) above the Scala dei Giganti (Giants’ Staircase) of the Palazzo Ducale (Doge’s Palace), with the Piazza through the Porta della Carta 1840
D31825
Turner Bequest CCCXIII 18
Pencil on cream wove paper, 123 x 173 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘15’ bottom centre and again towards bottom right
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘18’ bottom left, descending vertically
Stamped in black ‘CCCXIII – 18’ bottom left, descending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Finberg later annotated his 1909 Inventory entry (‘Renaissance entrance to courtyard (?)’): ‘Entrance of courtyard, Doge’s Palace’.1 The Turner scholar C.F. Bell marked another copy: ‘Porta della Carta’.2
With the page turned horizontally, the view is from within the courtyard of the Palazzo Ducale (Doge’s Palace), looking west beside the Scala dei Giganti (Giants’s Staircase) to the elaborately ornamented south-eastern corner of the Basilica, with the Arco Foscari entrance to the Porta della Carta arcade leading through to the Piazza, where the Loggetta and lower part of the campanile can be seen in the distance. The upper stages of the Basilica’s façade are continued onto folio 17 verso opposite (D31824).
Turner’s two notes of ‘15’ likely relate to the fifteen spaces between the balusters of the first three bays including the landing half-way up, and the same number along the section ascending and fading out over the mullioned windows in the right foreground. There is a view from the top of the stairs on folio 2 verso (D31794), under which related sketches are noted.

Matthew Imms
September 2018

1
Undated MS note by Finberg (died 1939) in interleaved copy of Finberg 1909, Prints and Drawings Room, Tate Britain, II, opposite p.1010.
2
Undated MS note by Bell (died 1966) in copy of Finberg 1909, Prints and Drawings Room, Tate Britain, II, p.1010.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘The Basilica of San Marco (St Mark’s) above the Scala dei Giganti (Giants’ Staircase) of the Palazzo Ducale (Doge’s Palace), with the Piazza through the Porta della Carta 1840 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, September 2018, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2019, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-the-basilica-of-san-marco-st-marks-above-the-scala-dei-r1196719, accessed 05 April 2026.