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

Finberg later annotated his 1909 Inventory entry (‘Bridge and buildings’): ‘Ospedale Civico (Scuola di S. Marco)’.1 The Turner scholar C.F. Bell marked another copy in the same way,2 and repeated the identification in a copy of Finberg’s 1930 book In Venice with Turner.3 The page’s title was amended by Ian Warrell to ‘The Scuola Grande di San Marco from the Rio dei Mendicanti; Part of the Domes of the Basilica di San Marco’ in 2003, in connection with his concurrent Turner and Venice exhibition at Tate Britain.4 The drawing was made with the page turned horizontally, and it was turned the other way up for details relating to the opposite page, as noted below.

The main view is to the north-north-east up the canal to the entrance front of the scuola , with its rounded gables, at the centre. The slight but fairly precise details of the windows and balconies seen obliquely at the left, and the shallow inverted-v profile in the foreground indicate that the viewpoint was the Ponte Rosso, with the Ponte del Cavallo beyond. On the near side of the campo south of the scuola is the canal front of the Palazzo Dandolo, with its central windows and balconies; the apparently rather jumbled buildings to the right have been replaced by a more regular façade.

The imposing entrance front of the church of Santi Giovanni e Paolo, set back from the canal, is masked by the palace. There is a similar but more detailed prospect from a little further forward on the canal itself, bringing the church into view, on folio 32 verso (D31989), under which other views around and inside it are discussed. Warrell has suggested that Turner may have revisited the church here on the way back to the centre of the city from the Lagoon in the vicinity of the Madonna dell’ Orto church to its north-west (see folio 41 verso and the recto; D32006–D32007), perhaps to see a favourite Titian painting after a busy service had distracted him previously (see folios 34 verso–35 recto; D31992–D31993).5 For this sketchbook’s somewhat convoluted general sequence, see its Introduction.

The other way up at the bottom right are details of the cupolas surmounting the domes of the basilica of San Marco (St Mark’s), supplementing the elaborate full-page view from the courtyard of the Palazzo Ducale (Doge’s Palace) on folio 43 recto opposite (D32009), where there was barely enough space to show the profiles of the hemispherical domes themselves towards the outer edge.