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 West End of Milan Cathedral and Piazza del Duomo from the Arcades 1819

Image 1 of 2
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The West End of Milan Cathedral and Piazza del Duomo from the Arcades’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 7 Recto:
The West End of Milan Cathedral and Piazza del Duomo from the Arcades 1819
D14337
Turner Bequest CLXXV 7
Pencil on white wove paper, 112 x 185 mm
Partial watermark ‘Al | 18’
Inscribed by John Ruskin in blue ink ‘7’ top right and ‘300’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CLXXV 7’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The Turner scholar C.F. Bell correctly annotated Finberg’s 1909 non-committal Inventory entry (‘Various buildings’): ‘Piazza del Duomo, Milan’.1 The view is to the south-east across the square in front of Milan Cathedral, which itself appears much the same today; part of the tallest, central doorway of the five on its west front is shown on the left, partly obscured by one of the arches in the foreground. The arcades have been replaced, and are dominated by the triumphal arch-style entrance to the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, which now stands a little west of Turner’s viewpoint.
See under folio 2 recto (D14328), a more direct prospect of the cathedral, 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.
Verso:
Blank

Matthew Imms
March 2017

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘The West End of Milan Cathedral and Piazza del Duomo from the Arcades 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-west-end-of-milan-cathedral-and-piazza-del-duomo-from-r1186450, accessed 19 April 2024.