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 > Milan to Venice Sketchbook > Artwork

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

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Castelvecchio and its Bridge on the River Adige, Verona’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 29 Verso:
The Castelvecchio and its Bridge on the River Adige, Verona 1819
D14370
Turner Bequest CLXXV 29a
Pencil on white wove paper, 112 x 185 mm
Partial watermark ‘lee | 13’
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The drawing is inverted relative to the sketchbook’s foliation. 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 alternative local name of the medieval bridge over a bend of the River Adige. This is a variation on the double-page view east on folios 28 verso–29 recto (D14368–D14369), turning slightly northwards to show the towers of central Verona.
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.

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-r1186483, accessed 05 April 2026.