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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > Vignette watercolours c.1826-1843 > Watercolours Related to Samuel Rogers's ... > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Vignette Study of Florence: Palazzo Vecchio and Loggia dei Lanzi; ?for Rogers's 'Italy' c.1826-36

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Vignette Study of Florence: Palazzo Vecchio and Loggia dei Lanzi; ?for Rogers's 'Italy'’ c.1826-36
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Vignette Study of Florence: Palazzo Vecchio and Loggia dei Lanzi; ?for Rogers’s ‘Italy’ circa 1826–36
D27539
Turner Bequest CCLXXX 22
Watercolour, approximately 175 x 190 mm on white wove paper, 392 x 292 mm
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘(22’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCLXXX 22’ bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The style and content of this unfinished vignette link it most directly to a preliminary study that Turner produced to illustrate Rogers’s chapter on Florence in Rogers’s Italy (see Tate D27612; Turner Bequest CCLXXX 95). Both studies are executed in a light wash and centre around a view of the Palazzo Vecchio. Turner here shows the Palazzo Vecchio and Loggia dei Lanzi, as well as the Fountain of Neptune in the foreground. Piggott has suggested that the composition may be based on a sketch from the Rome and Florence sketchbook, 1819 (see Tate D16554; Turner Bequest CXCI 37).1
The final composition chosen to illustrate Florence in the publication shows a traditional view of the city from Fiesole (see Tate D27673; Turner Bequest CCLXXX).
1
Piggott 1993, p.95, erroneously as connected to Rogers’s Poems.
Technical notes:
Watermark ‘J. Whatman / Turkey Mill’
Verso:
Inscribed by unknown hands in pencil ‘CCLXXX 22’ lower right and ‘AB 117 P | M’ bottom right

Meredith Gamer
August 2006

How to cite

Meredith Gamer, ‘Vignette Study of Florence: Palazzo Vecchio and Loggia dei Lanzi; ?for Rogers’s ‘Italy’ c.1826–36 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, August 2006, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2012, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-vignette-study-of-florence-palazzo-vecchio-and-loggia-dei-r1133309, accessed 19 April 2024.