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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8

Joseph Mallord William Turner The Castelvecchio and its Bridge on the River Adige, Verona 1819

Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 29 Recto:
The Castelvecchio and its Bridge on the River Adige, Verona 1819
D14369
Turner Bequest CLXXV 29
Pencil on white wove paper, 112 x 185 mm
Partial watermark ‘lee | 13’
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘14’ left of centre, over bridge
Inscribed by John Ruskin in blue ink ‘29’ top right and ‘300’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CLXXV 29’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The Turner scholar C.F. Bell annotated Finberg’s 1909 Inventory entry (‘The Bridge of Castel Vecchio, Verona’) as ‘Ponte dei Scaligeri’,1 Ponte Scaligero being the local alternative. The long medieval bridge over a bend of the meandering River Adige west of central Verona is seen looking east from the south bank in the vicinity of Rigaste San Zeno, with the medieval Castelvecchio fortress on the right. The castellated brick and stone bridge was destroyed during the Second World War and subsequently fully restored,2 while the towers are partly obscured by trees on the bank.
The northern arches of the bridge are continued on folio 28 verso opposite (D14368), and there is a single-page reprise of the view from a slightly different angle on the verso (D14370). Turner drew the bridge again in the 1833 Vienna up to Venice sketchbook (Tate D31538, D31577; Turner Bequest CCCXI 62a, 83). For other Verona views in the present book, see under folio 25 recto (D14363).

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
See ‘Scaliger Bridge’, Structurae, accessed 16 November 2016, https://structurae.net/structures/scaliger-bridge.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘The Castelvecchio and its Bridge on the River Adige, Verona 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-the-castelvecchio-and-its-bridge-on-the-river-adige-verona-r1186482, accessed 20 August 2025.