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 Porta Borsari, Verona 1819

Image 1 of 2
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Porta Borsari, Verona’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 28 Recto:
The Porta Borsari, Verona 1819
D14367
Turner Bequest CLXXV 28
Pencil on white wove paper, 112 x 185 mm
Inscribed by John Ruskin in blue ink ‘28’ top right and ‘300’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CLXXV 28’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Finberg subsequently annotated his vague 1909 Inventory entry (‘Part of a church (?)’) as ‘P[ro]b[abl]y Amphitheatre’,1 but the Turner scholar C.F. Bell correctly annotated another copy: ‘Porta dei Borsari, Verona’.2 The delicately articulated Roman limestone screen, set between houses on the Corso Porta Borsari, is seen from the north-east (the far side being plainer), with its twin pedimented arches below two storeys of open window-like arches, some set within aedicules.
Turner drew the structure again in the 1833 Vienna up to Venice sketchbook (Tate D31539; Turner Bequest CCCXI 63). For other Verona views in the present book, see under folio 25 recto (D14363).

Matthew Imms
March 2017

1
Undated MS note by A.J. Finberg (died 1939) in copy of Finberg 1909, Tate Britain Prints and Drawings Room, I, p.512.
2
Undated MS note by C.F. Bell (died 1966) in copy of Finberg 1909, Tate Britain Prints and Drawings Room, I, p.512.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘The Porta Borsari, Verona 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-porta-borsari-verona-r1186480, accessed 22 July 2025.