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

The most substantial sketch here occupies the upper half of the page, and appears to be labelled ‘Fruit Market’. Finberg read this as ‘Neumarkt’,1 and gave the same reading for a note on folio 82 recto (D31756), which does indeed include Egna (otherwise ‘Neumarkt’ in its German form), between Trento and Bolzano (Bozen).

Here, however, the view seems to show the cathedral at Trento itself from the east, with the narrow turret at the corner of the Palazzo Pretorio on the near side of the cathedral’s shallow dome and onion-domed campanile (compare the view in the opposite direction on folio 77 recto; D31746), against the backdrop of mountains across the Adige (Etsch) Valley. The viewpoint was presumably the Piazza delle Erbe, hence the label, shown as a more open area on old maps than the small space now hemmed in by later buildings which preclude this prospect. There is a similar view on folio 37 recto (D31669), under which other views of Trento on adjacent pages of this sketchbook and its place in Turner’s itinerary are discussed.

The other way up below are two bands of unidentified mountain views. Over half of the pages in this book comprise relatively slight sketches from Turner’s homeward route north through the valleys of the Alps via Trento, Bolzano (Bozen) and Innsbruck. As set out in the Introduction, although his overall itinerary is clear from many identified subjects, they were are not drawn in a single sequence, making the rugged scenes between them difficult to place. The bottom register appears to include several fragmentary elements, including details of buildings, and there appears to be a brief continuation from a view with a fortress on a crag on folio 40 recto opposite (D31675). Slight calligraphic marks to the left and right of the central view may be annotations, but if so they are too scrawled to make anything out.