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 > Milan to Venice Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner The South Transept of Milan Cathedral 1819

Image 1 of 2
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The South Transept of Milan Cathedral’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 4 Recto:
The South Transept of Milan Cathedral 1819
D14332
Turner Bequest CLXXV 4
Pencil on white wove paper, 185 x 112 mm
Partial watermark ‘lee | 13’
Inscribed by John Ruskin in blue ink ‘4’ top left, ascending vertically and ‘300’ top right, ascending vertically
Stamped in black ‘CLXXV 4’ top right, ascending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The Turner scholar C.F. Bell annotated Finberg’s 1909 Inventory entry (‘Part of the Cathedral, Milan’): ‘East end from rear of the episcopal Palace’.1 However, as Ian Warrell tentatively suggested, the view is of the south side of the cathedral,2 looking east to the elaborate south transept with its projecting apse rising to about two-thirds of the overall height. The pinnacles seen today are not in evidence here.
The surroundings are much altered, but the building in the right foreground is the Palazzo Reale (the Palazzo Arcivescovie being a little way beyond on that side). See under folio 2 recto (D14328) for other Milan views.
1
Undated MS note by C.F. Bell (died 1966) in copy of Finberg 1909, Tate Britain Prints and Drawings Room, I, p.512.
2
Undated note by Ian Warrell in Tate catalogue files.
Verso:
Blank

Matthew Imms
March 2017

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘The South Transept of Milan Cathedral 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-south-transept-of-milan-cathedral-r1186445, accessed 25 April 2024.