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 Piazza dei Signori, Vicenza, with the Basilica Palladiana, Torre Bissara and Loggia del Capitano 1819

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Piazza dei Signori, Vicenza, with the Basilica Palladiana, Torre Bissara and Loggia del Capitano’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 33 Verso:
The Piazza dei Signori, Vicenza, with the Basilica Palladiana, Torre Bissara and Loggia del Capitano 1819
D14377
Turner Bequest CLXXV 33a
Pencil on white wove paper, 112 x 185 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘Ion’ and ‘Cor’ towards centre left, beside buildings, and ‘9’ and ‘4’ towards top right, on façade
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Inverted relative to the sketchbook’s foliation, the left foreground is continued a little way onto folio 34 recto opposite (D14378). The Turner scholar C.F. Bell correctly annotated Finberg’s 1909 Inventory entry (‘Various Buildings’) as ‘Piazza dei Signori Vicenza’.1 Bell similarly marked Finberg’s augmented entries for other pages in this sketchbook in his 1930 In Venice with Turner: ‘Vicenza’.2
The view is north-east along the north front of the civic Basilica Palladiana on the right, towards the free-standing twin columns supporting statues of the lion of St Mark (not evident here) and Christ. The top of the slender Torre Bissara has been included as a separate detail to its left. Turner did not linger over the elegant loggias of the two-storey basilica, limiting himself habitually to depicting one full bay and part of another, while noting that there were ‘9’ in all on this side, with ‘4’ columns clustered at the corner. The frontage of the Loggia del Capitano in the foreground on the left likewise received rather summary treatment. Compare the much more detailed, lively view made in 1834 by James Duffield Harding (Tate T00997).
Another sketchbook Turner carried with him on this tour includes travel notes by James Hakewill (1778–1843), with whom he had been collaborating on the Picturesque Tour of Italy (published in 1820); see Nicola Moorby’s Introduction to the Route to Rome book (Tate; Turner Bequest CLXXI). Hakewill mentioned: ‘Vicenza – | Get a guide to show you | Palladios house and some of | his Palaces. | go to the Rotondo Villa’ (Tate D13901; Turner Bequest CLXXI 23).
For other Vicenza views, see under folio 32 verso (D14375).

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
Undated MS note by Bell (before 1936) in copy of A.J. Finberg, In Venice with Turner, London 1930, Prints and Drawings Study Room, British Museum, London, p.[?]163, as transcribed by Ian Warrell (undated notes, Tate catalogue files).

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘The Piazza dei Signori, Vicenza, with the Basilica Palladiana, Torre Bissara and Loggia del Capitano 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-piazza-dei-signori-vicenza-with-the-basilica-palladiana-r1186490, accessed 17 May 2025.