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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8

Joseph Mallord William Turner The Piazza San Marco (St Mark's Square), Venice, with the Basilica and Campanile 1819

Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 44 Recto:
The Piazza San Marco (St Mark’s Square), Venice, with the Basilica and Campanile 1819
D14397
Turner Bequest CLXXV 44
Pencil on white wove paper, 112 x 185 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘G R W’, ‘G B’, ‘[?5] B’, ‘R’ and ‘R’ top centre, beside top of campanile, and ‘Composite’, ‘[?F...]’, ‘[?Mldg] | double’, ‘5’, ‘Female Head and | Lion at [diagram of keystone]’ and ‘Trophies and Putti’ right of centre, sloping in line with perspective of façade
Inscribed by John Ruskin in blue ink ‘44’ top right and ‘300’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CLXXV 44’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Finberg subsequently annotated his 1909 Inventory entry (‘Piazza S. Marco’): ‘looking twds. S. Mark’s’.1 The Turner scholar C.F. Bell annotated another copy: ‘looking towards the Basilica’.2 The view is east-north-east along St Mark’s Square; Finberg later noted Turner’s viewpoint as ‘standing beside the fourth column from the entrance to the square’.3 The campanile is dominant from this angle at the centre, with the basilica to its left, the Palazzo Ducale (Doge’s Palace) to its right, and various supplementary details of its upper stages alongside, as Finberg set out: ‘the scallop decorations of the four arches at the top of the brickwork, then the simple shaft and capital of one of the four arches of the stone belfry, and then all [Turner] could see of the figure seated between two lions on the tower above’.4
As Finberg realised: ‘The high sloping spire should be carried to a point immediately below the base which supports the angel on the summit, but apparently there was scaffolding around the upper part’,5 as seen more clearly on folio 84 recto (D14476).
At the gutter is the Torre dell’Orologio (clock tower), and the view continues a little way onto folio 43 verso opposite (D14396), where the Procuratie Vecchie range north of the square balances the composition opposite the regular façade of the Procuratie Nuove advancing along the south side here. Turner has typically only drawn the nearest bays in detail, while adding more written notes. Finberg observed: ‘One width of the lower storeys was sufficient, as they were all alike, but two widths of the upper storeys was necessary, because the entablatures of the windows are crowned alternately with triangular and semi-circular pediments’. He called this ‘an excellent example of Turner’s systematic note-taking’.6
The great height of the campanile left Turner with little room for manoeuvre along the bottom of the view, and he added a study of the squares paving in the sky above San Marco. For other drawings made in the vicinity and an overview of Turner’s coverage of Venice, see the sketchbook’s Introduction.
1
Undated MS note by A.J. Finberg (died 1939) in interleaved copy of Finberg 1909, Tate Britain Prints and Drawings Room, I, p.513.
2
Undated MS note by C.F. Bell (died 1966) in copy of Finberg 1909, Tate Britain Prints and Drawings Room, I, p.513.
3
Finberg 1930, p.28.
4
Ibid., pp.28, 31.
5
Ibid., p.31.
6
Ibid.
Technical notes:
A horizontal tear at the gutter, presumably connected to the extraction of this page for display in the nineteenth century, has been repaired; the glue has subsequently darkened.

Matthew Imms
March 2017

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘The Piazza San Marco (St Mark’s Square), Venice, with the Basilica and Campanile 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-piazza-san-marco-st-marks-square-venice-with-the-r1186510, accessed 28 March 2024.