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 Part of a Panoramic View from the Bacino, Venice: The Palazzo Ducale (Doge's Palace), New Prison, Hotel Danieli and Church of San Zaccaria; Santa Maria della Salute from the Canale della Giudecca 1819

Image 1 of 2
  • Enhanced image
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Part of a Panoramic View from the Bacino, Venice: The Palazzo Ducale (Doge's Palace), New Prison, Hotel Danieli and Church of San Zaccaria; Santa Maria della Salute from the Canale della Giudecca’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 56 Verso:
Part of a Panoramic View from the Bacino, Venice: The Palazzo Ducale (Doge’s Palace), New Prison, Hotel Danieli and Church of San Zaccaria; Santa Maria della Salute from the Canale della Giudecca 1819
D14422
Turner Bequest CLXXV 56a
Pencil on white wove paper, 112 x 185 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘[disk] Red with the Lion’ towards top left
Inscribed in pencil ‘56a’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Finberg subsequently annotated his 1909 Inventory entry (‘The Ducal Palace and Riva degli Schiavoni from the Canal, with sketches of the Salute’): ‘Doge’s Pal., Prigione, Danielis, with S Zaccaria (?), & S. Giorgio dei Greci; also Salute & Campanile’.1 In another copy he wrote: ‘B Sighs. Prison &c’.2 The Turner scholar C.F. Bell marked a further copy: ‘opposite the prison’ after ‘Canal’.3
Inverted relative to the sketchbook’s foliation, the view is north from the Bacino with the Doge’s Palace at the left of the main view, with the Riva degli Schiavoni waterfront running east, including the New Prison left of centre, the Hotel Danieli right of centre, and at the far right the west end and campanile of the church of San Zaccaria, repeated towards the top right to include its dome too. The church is now partly obscured by tall buildings.
The main drawing is actually the right-hand part of a three-page panorama, albeit one which is effectively impossible to view all at once. It continues on folios 57 verso and 58 verso (D14424, D14426),4 looking to the north-west, with the campanile of St Mark’s and to the west with Santa Maria della Salute respectively. Turner would have had to roll or almost fold back each page successively so that its outer edge would meet the preceding gutter, where the architecture matches precisely in each case.
At the top left is a slight sketch of the church of Santa Maria della Salute, seen to the north from the Giudecca Canal, with the outline of the campanile of St Mark’s in the distance to its north-east, complementing the less regular pointed shapes of the sails to its left.
For other drawings made in the vicinity and an overview of Turner’s coverage of Venice, see the sketchbook’s Introduction.

Matthew Imms
March 2017

1
Undated MS note by A.J. Finberg (died 1939) in interleaved copy of Finberg 1909, Tate Britain Prints and Drawings Room, I, opposite p.514.
2
Undated MS note by Finberg in copy of Finberg 1909, Tate Britain Prints and Drawings Room, I, p.514.
3
Undated MS note by C.F. Bell (died 1966) in copy of Finberg 1909, Tate Britain Prints and Drawings Room, I, p.514.
4
See Warrell 2003, pp.83, 263 note 2.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Part of a Panoramic View from the Bacino, Venice: The Palazzo Ducale (Doge’s Palace), New Prison, Hotel Danieli and Church of San Zaccaria; Santa Maria della Salute from the Canale della Giudecca 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-part-of-a-panoramic-view-from-the-bacino-venice-the-palazzo-r1186534, accessed 10 May 2024.