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

Finberg later hesitantly annotated his 1909 Inventory entry (‘River, with town’): ‘?Verona JPH ?AJF’.1 The initials are those of the etcher and collector John Postle Heseltine (1843–1929), whose occasional suggestions Finberg acknowledged in this way. The Turner scholar C.F. Bell marked another copy: ‘Trento’.2 Although Turner had made numerous sketches at Verona in the Vienna up to Venice book (Tate; Turner Bequest CCCXI) on the outward leg of this 1833 tour, Bell’s identification is the correct one.

With the page turned horizontally, the view is southward to the centre of the old city, looking across the former course of the River Adige (Etsch), since straightened to flow beyond the right-hand edge of this view. The most prominent feature is the Torre Vanga, guarding the old wooden bridge to the city’s Portella gateway. The height of the tower is now somewhat diminished, as it has lost its enclosed upper level and shallow roof and acquired battlements instead. There is a view from the opposite direction on folio 76 verso (D31745).

Today, the Via Torre Vanga runs where the river once did, and the most convenient viewpoint is the Cavalcavia San Lorenzo, parallel to its north, given that Turner was apparently a little further north again, where a coach park backs onto the main railway line. The city walls to the right, with the mountains down the Adige Valley in the distance, do not survive. The other notable landmark here is the campanile of Santa Maria Maggiore, with its dark dome, south-west of the tower; there may be slight indications of buildings around the cathedral square beyond.

Compare the view from the west on folio 42 recto opposite (D31679), and an engraving of Trent (sic) similar to the latter view after Turner’s friend and rival Clarkson Stanfield, as discussed under D31679. For other views of Trento on adjacent pages of this sketchbook and its place in Turner’s itinerary, see under folio 37 recto (D31669).