Finberg later annotated his 1909
Inventory entry (‘Basilica of St. Mark’s’): ‘West front’.
1 The Turner scholar C.F. Bell marked another copy in the same way.
2 He also made a similar note in a copy of Finberg’s 1930 book
In Venice with Turner.
3 The drawing was made with the page turned horizontally.
Turner was positioned about half way along the south side of the Piazza (St Mark’s Square), near the renowned Caffè Florian, out of sight to the right within the arcade of the Procuratie Nouve, but apparently noted in the corner. The centre-line of the square runs east-north-east, and the furthest point in the sketch, the north side of the Piazzetta dei Leoni (or Leoncini) off the far corner of the square to the left of the basilica of San Marco, is to the north-east. Turner’s drawing is detailed enough to make out the Corinthian half-columns on the façade of the church of San Basso, seen in the foreground of the view back in this direction on folio 46 verso (
D32016).
Advancing from there along the north side of the main square, the Torre dell’Orologio is seen obliquely, with the first two arches of the Procuratie Vecchie’s long arcade at the left-hand edge. Turner noted ‘Blue stars’ and ‘L[ion] of S
t M[ar]k’, with a diagonal line pointing towards the top stage of the clocktower, where there is a high-relief sculpture of the winged lion of St Mark, hinted at in the sketch, against a grid of gold stars on a blue background. The bell with bronze figures to strike the hours is also shown. Compare the view from the south on folio 4 recto (
D31934), where there are similar annotations.
The three small features ranged across the pavement in front of St Mark’s are the bases of the flagpoles which would have risen to almost to the full height of the page had they not been omitted, presumably in order not to distract from the façade; a token vertical stroke is aligned in the sky over the left-hand base. The details of the structure, founded on five deep portals with mosaicked lunette gables and elaborate finials above the outer pairs and a large window with an ogee surround over the main entrance, gradually fade out towards the right. Turner rarely recorded the whole of a fundamentally symmetrical building in the same degree of detail, presumably to save time. In this case there is a complementary page of fragmentary studies and notes on folio 54 verso (
D32032), including a written mention of the ancient Roman bronze horses over the central arch, indicated here by the curves of their necks and backs; oddly, five seem to be implied rather than the four which actually stood there (since replaced by replicas).
The alignment of the lightly indicated domes, with a separate detail of one of the cupolas, confirms Turner’s off-centre viewpoint, while the converging diagonal lines of the paving showing that in conventional perspective terms, the vanishing point was towards the right. The drawing’s biggest anomaly is the effective omission of St Mark’s very substantial brick campanile, just alongside the Procuratie Nuove; it ought to come next right after the five portals and dominate the space about half-way towards the church. Indeed, on a corresponding scale its width would have filled the rest of the page to the right-hand edge at least, and its height would have meant continuing it upwards across most if not all of the opposite page.
Instead, there are a few loose vertical strokes before slight indications of the intricacies of the north-west corner of the Palazzo Ducale (Doge’s Palace), consequently shown too close to St Mark’s. The horizontal elements at the bottom right may be the original base of the tower, or market awnings around it as seen in earlier paintings such as Canaletto’s Venice: Piazza San Marco of about 1758 (National Gallery, London; see also below), although this is difficult to confirm as the structure abruptly collapsed in 1902 and the replica features a plainer base. What seems to resemble a free-standing column or post towards the bottom right is also problematic, unless it was literally that, or a hint of a corner of the classical Loggetta projecting beyond the far side of the tower.
It may be that Turner recalled his previous determined attempt to fit the whole of the soaring tower and spire on one page with St Mark’s in the background, in a crisp annotated drawing from slightly to the left and perhaps a little further back, framed by the steeply receding Procuratie Nuove, in the 1819
Milan to Venice sketchbook (Tate
D44397; Turner Bequest CLXXV 44). On that first visit he also made a less spatially challenging study from further to the right in the
Venice to Ancona book (
D14491; CLXXVI 2), with the base seen on a slight diagonal, obscuring the two right-hand portals of the church and bringing the palace’s Porta della Carta into view (compare folio 20 verso;
D31965).
D14491 appears to show awnings around the base.
As Ian Warrell has observed,
4 this page presumably informed the oil painting
Juliet and her Nurse, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1836 (private collection; engraved in 1842 as ‘St Mark’s Place, Venice’: Tate impression
T05188),
5 where the square is presented from a notional rooftop position, converging towards the church, campanile and palace, shown somewhat waywardly in terms of details, proportions and juxtapositions. See also the studies of chimney pots and detailed elevation of the tower in isolation on folio 100 verso (
D32116), perhaps studied from the top of the Palazzo Giustinian (Hotel Europa), where Turner was likely staying, not far south-west of the square.
Folios 4 recto, 44 recto and verso and 45 recto (
D31934,
D32011–D32013) are among other studies around the square, showing the basilica, clocktower, campanile and palace in different combinations.
D32011 in particular gives a sense of the relative proportions of the church and its tower as shown in the painting. The drawings between folio 93 recto and the present page (
D32101–D32114) are all of familiar subjects within a small area around the Grand Canal’s Bacino entrance off the Dogana, the north side of the Bacino and along the Molo, and up the Piazzetta to this point. For this sketchbook’s somewhat convoluted general sequence, see its Introduction.
The whole of the basilica’s west front, much as Turner would have known it, was documented in painstaking detail in a large oil painting commissioned by John Ruskin from the topographical artist John Wharlton Bunney (1877–82; Museums Sheffield), from a closer and more central position which avoided the issue of the campanile, just beyond the picture space to the right.
