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

Turner noted inside the front cover of this sketchbook (D41050) that he arrived in Milan at noon on a Wednesday (14 January), complaining of ‘Snow all the way’. This is one of ten works in the sketchbook depicting the city’s celebrated Duomo, formally known as the Basilica cattedrale metropolitana di Santa Maria Nascente. See under folio 10 verso (D21683) for further commentary and a list of relevant views from this sketchbook and Turner’s earlier visit to Milan in 1819.

As indicated by Turner’s bottom-left inscription ‘Pi[a]zza Fontana’, his viewpoint for this study was from the Piazza Fontana, located a couple of streets to the east of the Piazza del Duomo. Looking north-west, Turner glimpsed the Duomo’s tall lantern spire, its pinnacles and flying buttresses protruding above the buildings. Today, more of the cathedral is obscured by high-rise blocks. In the foreground is a Neoclassical marble fountain decorated with mermaids and dolphins, designed by the architect Giuseppe Piermarini in the 1780s and sculpted by Giuseppe Franchi. The building to the left with the elaborate broken pediment above the entrance still stands today, functioning as the Archbishop’s Curia, the organisational centre of the diocese.