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

The Turner scholar C.F. Bell annotated Finberg’s 1909 Inventory entry (‘View on the Grand Canal – “St. Estuahe” (Sant’Eustachio)’): ‘San Stae and the Palazzo Pesaro’.1 He also marked a copy of Finberg’s 1930 book In Venice with Turner in this way.2 The main drawing was made with the page turned horizontally.

Except for folio 58 verso (D32040), the sketches between this page and folio 59 recto (D32036–D32041) show aspects of the north-eastern reaches of the Grand Canal; for the sketchbook’s somewhat convoluted general sequence, see its Introduction. Here, the view is to the south-east, with the Rialto in the distance. In the immediate foreground on the left is the Palazzo Emo alla Maddalena, with the balcony over its doorway just around the shallow corner dividing its two-part façade. The only other readily identifiable features down that side are the twin obelisk-like chimneys of the Palazzo Fontana Rezzonico, with a slight indication of the campanile of Santa Maria Formosa on the skyline beyond the bend.

Coming forwards along the other side, the north-west end of the Fabbriche Nuove overlooks the Pescaria, where a prominent later building now stands; at the centre are the heavily articulated classical frontages of the Ca’ Corner della Regina and the Ca’ Pesaro. These are followed by lower buildings with the Palazzo Coccina Giunti Foscarini Giovannelli on the corner towards the right, flanking the steps of the broad quay in front of the Baroque façade of San Stae (Sant’Eustacchio), seen to the south. Turner made an attempt to note its name underneath, but struggled towards the end. A ferry station now projects from the near end.

There is an immediate continuation at the bottom centre, with the right-hand corner of the pediment and the top of the modest campanile at the church’s far end, above the plain upper windows of the Palazzo Priuli Bon and the corner of the lost Palazzo Contarini. The palaces are continued a little way down over the gutter onto folio 57 recto opposite (D32037), with the Gothic windows of the Priuli Bon’s first floor and selected details of its Renaissance neighbour. The main view on the other page is from the same position, looking in the opposite direction, with the Contarini in the left foreground. Destroyed by fire in the nineteenth century, it is shown in detail in a painting of The Grand Canal with a View of the Church of San Stae by Michele Marieschi (1710–1744; private collection).3

There are two similar views from about the same point on a single page of the 1840 Venice and Botzen sketchbook (Tate D31857; Turner Bequest CCCXIII 34a), where another half-legible note shows the artist still wrestling with the name of the church. Folio 59 recto (D32041) of the present book is from a little nearer the Rialto, with the Corner and Pesaro palaces in the immediate foreground.