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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1836-47 Modern painter > Venice, Austria and Southern Germany ... > Venice and Botzen Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Views on the Canale della Giudecca, with the Gesuati and Santa Maria della Salute, the Zitelle and Redentore, and the Convent of Santi Biagio e Cataldo 1840

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Views on the Canale della Giudecca, with the Gesuati and Santa Maria della Salute, the Zitelle and Redentore, and the Convent of Santi Biagio e Cataldo’ 1840
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 33 Recto:
Views on the Canale della Giudecca, with the Gesuati and Santa Maria della Salute, the Zitelle and Redentore, and the Convent of Santi Biagio e Cataldo 1840
D31854
Turner Bequest CCCXIII 33
Pencil on cream wove paper, 123 x 173 mm
Partial watermark ‘J. Wha’
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘Eu Femia’ towards top right, ‘[...] Gesuati’ and ‘St Biagio’ centre right
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘33’ top right, ascending vertically
Stamped in black ‘CCCXIII – 33’ top right, ascending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
There are several studies here, all made with the page turned horizontally, from around the central reach of the Canale della Giudecca. The most detailed, in the second band, was drawn from south of the Gesuati, with its dome and twin campanili on the left; the view then ranges to the east, with the campanile of San Marco (St Mark’s), its temporary scaffolding (as discussed in the tour’s Introduction) lightly indicated, the dome and towers of Santa Maria della Salute, above the Giudecca waterfront, and the distant campanile and dome of San Giorgio Maggiore across the Bacino in the distance.
After that point the panorama begins to return again along the south side of the canal, where the dome of the Zitelle is lightly indicated at the right-hand edge. Squeezed in at the outer edge above, the view is continued from the same point, with the Zitelle again, the Redentore (cut off at the top but shown in detail on folio 32 verso opposite (D31854), and the campanile of Sant’Eufemia labelled on the right, facing the Gesuati. The overall view is comparable to that set out in an atmospheric colour study (albeit without the Gesuati) in the contemporary Grand Canal and Giudecca sketchbook (Tate D32127; Turner Bequest CCCXV 11). The inverted view below seems to relate to another colour study there (D32128; CCCXV 12), showing the Isola della Giudecca churches to the east beyond the plain block of the lost convent of Santi Biagio e Cataldo (on the site of the Molino Stucky mill and factory complex, now a hotel), at what was then the western end of the island.
Labelled at the bottom left is a definite view of the convent and its campanile.1 Ian Warrell has noted that 1840 Giudecca studies such as those on folios 17 recto (D32823) and 30 verso–33 recto (D31849–D31854) here, and in the Venice; Passau to Würzburg sketchbook (Tate D31288–D31293; Turner Bequest CCCX 6a–9), show how Turner ‘really began to see that this previously neglected quarter offered original ways of seeing Venice’.2

Matthew Imms
September 2018

1
Compare and engraving and a detail of a Guardi painting reproduced at Jeff Cotton, ‘Santi Biagio e Cataldo’, The Churches of Venice, accessed 16 July 2018, https://www.churchesofvenice.co.uk/demolished.htm#santib&c.
2
Warrell 2003, pp.179, 264 note 4; see also pp.24, 92, 194, 246.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Views on the Canale della Giudecca, with the Gesuati and Santa Maria della Salute, the Zitelle and Redentore, and the Convent of Santi Biagio e Cataldo 1840 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, September 2018, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2019, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-views-on-the-canale-della-giudecca-with-the-gesuati-and-r1196749, accessed 16 July 2025.