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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1830-35 Annual tourist > Southern Germany, Austria and Venice ... > Venice Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner The Piazza San Marco (St Mark's Square), Venice, from the Piazzetta dei Leoni (Leoncini), with the Basilica and Campanile, and the Torre dell'Orologio 1833

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Piazza San Marco (St Mark's Square), Venice, from the Piazzetta dei Leoni (Leoncini), with the Basilica and Campanile, and the Torre dell'Orologio’ 1833
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 45 Verso:
The Piazza San Marco (St Mark’s Square), Venice, from the Piazzetta dei Leoni (Leoncini), with the Basilica and Campanile, and the Torre dell’Orologio 1833
D32014
Turner Bequest CCCXIV 45a
Pencil on white laid paper, 109 x 203 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘[?Wh]’ towards top right, over tower
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The Turner scholar C.F. Bell annotated Finberg’s 1909 Inventory entry (‘Piazza of St. Mark’s’): ‘from Piazza de Leoncini’.1 He also marked a copy of Finberg’s 1930 book In Venice with Turner to the same effect.2 The page’s title was amended by Ian Warrell to ‘The Piazza from the Piazzetta dei Leoni’ in 2003, in connection with his concurrent Turner and Venice exhibition at Tate Britain.3 The drawing was made with the page turned horizontally.
This page, folio 46 recto opposite and its verso (D32014–D32016) are all views from the confines of the small Piazzetta dei Leoni (or Leoncini) alongside the basilica of San Marco off the north-east corner of the Piazza (St Mark’s Square), looking south-west to the far end. Turner first recorded the scene in his 1819 Venice to Ancona sketchbook (Tate D14514–D14515; Turner Bequest CLXXVI 14a–15).
The present variant shows the twin marble lion statues which give the square its name flanking shallow steps in the foreground, the viewpoint being level with the north-east corner of the church. The profile its soaring campanile is indicated cursorily across the Piazza, with two of the three flagpoles in front of St Mark’s denoted by single strokes, and the spire of San Moisè in the distance near the centre. The Torre dell’Orologio is seen obliquely on the right, with what may be ‘Wh’ written above as a note of its stone’s whiteness.
Folios 44 recto–46 verso (D32011–D32016) all show views in the vicinity. For this sketchbook’s general sequence, including Hardy George’s broad overview,4 see its Introduction.

Matthew Imms
May 2019

1
Undated MS note by Bell (died 1966) in copy of Finberg 1909, Prints and Drawings Room, Tate Britain, II, p.1014.
2
Undated MS note by Bell in copy of A.J. Finberg, In Venice with Turner, London 1930, Study Room, British Museum, London, opposite p.169, as transcribed by Ian Warrell (Tate cataloguing files, as ‘before 1936’).
3
Noted October 2003 in Tate registrars’ files.
4
See George 1984, pp.13–15.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘The Piazza San Marco (St Mark’s Square), Venice, from the Piazzetta dei Leoni (Leoncini), with the Basilica and Campanile, and the Torre dell’Orologio 1833 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, May 2019, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, March 2023, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-the-piazza-san-marco-st-marks-square-venice-from-the-r1203692, accessed 17 July 2025.