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), Piazzetta and Campanile of San Marco (St Mark's), and with the Campanile of San Moisè Beyond 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), Piazzetta and Campanile of San Marco (St Mark's), and with the Campanile of San Moisè Beyond’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 57 Verso:
Part of a Panoramic View from the Bacino, Venice: The Palazzo Ducale (Doge’s Palace), Piazzetta and Campanile of San Marco (St Mark’s), and with the Campanile of San Moisè Beyond 1819
D14424
Turner Bequest CLXXV 57a
Pencil on white wove paper, 112 x 185 mm
Partial watermark ‘Al | 18’
Inscribed in pencil ‘57a’ top right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The Turner scholar C.F. Bell annotated Finberg’s 1909 Inventory entry (‘Looking along the right-hand side of the Canale di S. Marco, commencing at the Ducal Palace and Piazzetta’): ‘on the right. The Royal Palace in the middle Capitaneria di Posta to l’.1
Inverted relative to the sketchbook’s foliation, the view is north from the Bacino with the Doge’s Palace at the right, and the Piazzetta, the campanile of St Mark’s, Biblioteca Marciana (Libreria Sansoviniana) and the Zecca (the mint) running westwards, with the less conspicuous campanile of San Moisè away beyond the waterfront to the north-west.
The drawing is actually the mid-section of a three-page panorama, albeit which is effectively impossible to view all at once. It continues on folios 56 verso and 58 verso (D14422, D14426),2 looking to north to the rest of the Doge’s Palace and the Riva degli Schiavoni to its east, 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.
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 C.F. Bell (died 1966) in copy of Finberg 1909, Tate Britain Prints and Drawings Room, I, p.514.
2
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), Piazzetta and Campanile of San Marco (St Mark’s), and with the Campanile of San Moisè Beyond 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-r1186536, accessed 22 September 2024.