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

Finberg later annotated his 1909 Inventory entry (‘On the Grand Canal. – “P. Balbi,” “Rezzonico,” “San Jacopo di Rialto,” &c.’), crossing out ‘“Rezzonico”’, remarking ‘no’ and adding: ‘F dei Tedeschi in distance’.1 The Turner scholar C.F. Bell marked another copy in much the same way.2 He also noted in a copy of Finberg’s 1930 book In Venice with Turner: ‘The Palazzo Rezzonico is not visible, Fondaco dei Tedeschi in distance’.3 The drawing was made with the page turned horizontally.

The view is to the south-east, towards the sharp bend to the right at the Rialto, with the bridge just out of sight from this angle. In the immediate left foreground, the elaborate Gothic façade of the Ca’ d’Oro is seen obliquely, with indications of features including the balconies flanking the delicate tracery of the windows, and hints of the diamond pattern of interlocking quatrefoil motifs over the arches on the top storey and the more rounded ones on the floor below. Turner drew tiny thumbnail studies of its elevation when he returned in 1840, in the Venice and Botzen sketchbook (Tate D31859; Turner Bequest CCCXIII 35a) and the Venice; Passau to Würzburg book (D31303; CCCX 14).

It is possible that the palace was the initial viewpoint for the similar prospect otherwise from a little further back on folio 77 verso (D32072), since incongruent Gothic details appear in its left foreground. That drawing includes the Palazzi Boldù a San Felice and Fontana Rezzonico, just behind the present viewpoint on the left, possibly accounting for two of Turner’s typically scrambled annotations, ‘P Balbi’ and ‘Rosonico’. Compare also the prospect on folio 59 recto (D32041), under which comparable views of 1819 and 1840 are noted.4

Just to the left of centre is the Fondaco dei Tedeschi (‘Fontico | Tardes[...]’), with the Fabbriche Nouve advancing on the right-hand side to the Pescaria, now overlooked by a large neo-Gothic market building. This addition obscures the view of the three campanili towards the right: San Bartolomeo, with its onion dome; San Marco (St Mark’s), much further off, with the scale of its conspicuous spire somewhat exaggerated; and San Giovanni Elemosinario, with a single large opening to the belfry on each side, seen here on the diagonal. Only the upper part of the latter remains readily visible from this point.

As Ian Warrell has observed,5 ‘S^t Jacob de Rialto’, above the first two, must refer to the small church of San Giacomo di Rialto (San Giacometto), near the north end of the Rialto Bridge, aligned with San Bartolomeo but hidden by waterfront buildings and lacking a free-standing campanile.6 Turner must have passed in on foot along the narrow Ruga dei Oresi towards the bridge (folios 51 recto, 52 recto; D32025, D32027), but presumably he simply misinterpreted or was misinformed by his boatman, who likely also gave him the names of the palaces in passing. See under folio 74 verso (D32066), for the long series of Grand Canal views in this part of the sketchbook; for its somewhat convoluted general sequence, including Hardy George’s broad overview,7 see the Introduction.