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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1836-47 Modern painter > The Second Meuse-Moselle Tour 1839 > Trèves to Cochem and Coblenz to Mayence ... > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Mainz Cathedral from the Gutenbergplatz, with the Statue of Gutenberg by Thorvaldsen 1839

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Mainz Cathedral from the Gutenbergplatz, with the Statue of Gutenberg by Thorvaldsen’ 1839
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 69 Recto:
Mainz Cathedral from the Gutenbergplatz, with the Statue of Gutenberg by Thorvaldsen 1839
D28487
Turner Bequest CCXC 69
Pencil on flecked off-white wove paper, 100 x 163 mm
Inscribed in pencil by Turner ‘[...] [?Gensfleish] de Gutenberg’ top right; ‘Fete of’ bottom right
Inscribed in blue ink by Ruskin ‘69’ top right
Stamped in black ‘CCXC–69’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The city of Mainz is celebrated primarily as the home of Johannes Gutenberg (1395–1468), the inventor of the mechanical moveable-type printing press. Gutenberg’s invention allowed for mass-communication, permanently altering the ways in which knowledge and ideas were distributed and circulated in society. The impact of the moveable type was revolutionary: this new form of printed word had the power to transcend borders, to increase literacy and learning, to expand traditional and accepted forms of knowledge, and to threaten political and religious authority. It is for these reasons, then, that this son of Mainz was represented by the Danish sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen (c.1770–1844) in a commemorative statue and placed in a central square named after him: the Gutenbergplatz. It is from this square that Turner sketched Thorvaldsen’s statue and the majestic Cathedral of Mainz in the present drawing.1
The presence of Thorvaldsen’s statue in this sketch was a crucial piece of evidence for Cecilia Powell’s redating of the tour from 1834 to 1839. As its foundation stone was laid on 8 July 1837 and the statue itself unveiled in 1837, Thorvaldsen’s Gutenburg imposes a clear terminus ante quem from which to date the drawing and the sketchbook. Thorvaldsen’s statue was, as Powell writes, ‘exceptionally well documented’ because:
its unveiling constituted not only the realisation of a long-cherished dream on the part of Mainz itself but also the culmination of an endeavour shared by many different countries throughout Europe. Turner could hardly have been unaware of the circumstances leading up to its inauguration, since these were reported in a number of British newspapers and journals between 1835 and 1837, while his annotation on his sketch, “Fete de”, is a clear indication that he also heard on-the-spot reports of the great celebratory day itself.2

Alice Rylance-Watson
July 2013

1
‘Bertel Thorvaldsen, Johann Gutenberg, 1833–1834’, Thorvaldsens Museum, http://thorvaldsensmuseum.dk/en/collections/work/A114, accessed 26 July 2013.
2
Powell 1991, p.47.

How to cite

Alice Rylance-Watson, ‘Mainz Cathedral from the Gutenbergplatz, with the Statue of Gutenberg by Thorvaldsen 1839 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, July 2013, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, November 2014, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-mainz-cathedral-from-the-gutenbergplatz-with-the-statue-of-r1150770, accessed 27 April 2024.