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 > Venice to Ancona Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner The Torri Garisenda and Asinelli, Bologna, from the Mercato di Mezzo 1819

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Torri Garisenda and Asinelli, Bologna, from the Mercato di Mezzo’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 83 Recto:
The Torri Garisenda and Asinelli, Bologna, from the Mercato di Mezzo 1819
D14641
Turner Bequest CLXXVI 79
Pencil on white wove paper, 184 x 111 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘T[...]’ bottom right
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘79’ top right, ascending vertically (now faint)
Stamped in black ‘CLXXVI – 79’ top right, ascending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Drawn with the page turned vertically, the view is east along Bologna’s Via Rizzoli (then the Mercato di Mezzo)1 to the Piazza di Porta Ravegnana, with the Torre Asinelli in the middle and the truncated Torre Garisenda leaning in on the left above the dome of the church of Santi Bartolomeo e Gaetano. While the relative lateral juxtapositions of the buildings and the extent to which the Torri Garisenda projects above the buildings on the left suggest a viewpoint back towards the corner of the Via Calzolerie, Turner seems to have struggled with the immense height of the central tower and the relative proportions of the towers and dome, perhaps indicating that he moved at least once in the course of making the drawing.
The dome and cupola appear much too tall in relation to the Torre Garisenda, while the crenellated course about half way up the Torre Asinelli should appear about level with the top of the cupola and the whole tower should be correspondingly wider and taller. Meanwhile the battlemented base appears far too narrow, and the statue seems to have migrated into the foreground from its actual position closer to the base; from a distance its headgear appears level with the battlements. See also the unresolved (and probably unresolvable) drawing made very close to the towers on folio 32 recto (D14544; Turner Bequest CLXXVI 28). For general remarks on Bologna and Turner’s numerous views on adjacent pages (some including the towers in the distance), see under folio 24 recto (D14532).
As Cecilia Powell has noted, Bologna: The Leaning Towers, a watercolour of about 1826 by Richard Parkes Bonington (Wallace Collection, London), shows a similar prospect but from rather further away, leaving the proportions and perspective less problematic.2 Turner appears to have considered a composition of the towers among his watercolour vignettes to illustrate the 1830 edition of Samuel Rogers’s Italy, although Meredith Gamer has suggested that he worked on two unfinished versions from memory (Tate D27531, D27619; Turner Bequest CCLXXX 14, 102) as they do not closely resemble any of the 1819 views.

Matthew Imms
March 2017

1
See Powell 1984, p.87.
2
See ibid., pp.464–5 note 93.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘The Torri Garisenda and Asinelli, Bologna, from the Mercato di Mezzo 1819 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, March 2017, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, July 2017, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-the-torri-garisenda-and-asinelli-bologna-from-the-mercato-di-r1186377, accessed 22 September 2024.