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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > First Italian Tour 1819-20 > Return from Italy Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner The Palazzo dei Giureconsulti in the Piazza Mercanti, Milan 1820

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Palazzo dei Giureconsulti in the Piazza Mercanti, Milan’ 1820
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 11 Recto:
The Palazzo dei Giureconsulti in the Piazza Mercanti, Milan 1820
D16661
Turner Bequest CXCII 11
Pencil on white wove paper, 128 x 98 mm
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘11’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CXCII11’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The subject of this sketch is the Palazzo dei Giureconsulti, a sixteenth-century palace which stands in the Piazza Mercanti (present-day Via Mercanti) near the centre of Milan. Turner’s study focuses on the building’s elaborately decorated clock-tower. In order to capture the full height of the structure he must have been standing within the nearby Palazzo della Ragione, a thirteenth-century hall which served as the city’s ‘broletto’ [civic headquarters].
A later view of the Palazzo dei Giureconsulti can be found within the Rome, Turin, Milan sketchbook, 1828 (see Tate D21688; Turner Bequest CCXXX V 13). For further sketches of Milan from the 1819–20 tour see the introduction to the sketchbook.

Nicola Moorby
April 2013

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘The Palazzo dei Giureconsulti in the Piazza Mercanti, Milan 1820 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, April 2013, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, August 2013, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-the-palazzo-dei-giureconsulti-in-the-piazza-mercanti-milan-r1142560, accessed 24 April 2024.