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

Finberg later annotated his basic 1909 Inventory entry (‘Part of Doge’s Palace’): ‘Porta della Carta, with part of St. Marks, & 2 pillars on left, & part of Doge’s Pal. on r.’1 The Turner scholar C.F. Bell marked another copy: ‘Porta della Carta’.2 The notional view is east from the Piazzetta along the south-western corner of the Basilica of San Marco (St Mark’s) past the free-standing Pilastri Acritani to the Porta della Carta, the entrance to the courtyard of the Palazzo Ducale (Doge’s Palace), the north-western corner of which is seen on the right. The setting in general was long familiar, although Turner had not recorded this corner in detail before.

In fact, the present page comprises three disjointed, side-by-side pencil studies, each on a different scale to fit the height of the page; relative to the receding part of the church on the left, the Porta should really be roughly two-thirds of the overall height suggested here, while the corner of the palace should be perhaps a third as tall again.

Ian Warrell has reasonably described this page as ‘the sketch from which Turner probably developed the watercolour’3 of this scene on pale buff paper (Tate D32247; Turner Bequest CCCXVIII 28), in which he retained the relative proportions of the left-hand and central sections, but attempted to suggest the prominence of the palace from this angle by increasing the height of its ground- and first-floor arcades a little. The watercolour is highly atmospheric but unresolved in various ways, as discussed in its entry. Nevertheless, in relation to the present page and folio 88 recto opposite (D32435), Warrell has observed: ‘one is constantly amazed by the economy with which a few dashes of [Turner’s] pencil created not only instantly recognisable outlines of familiar sights, but how effectively they suggest the ornamental detail on buildings like the Doge’s Palace.’4

D32435 features a wide prospect the other way, taking in the southward length of the Piazzetta as well as the same corners of the palace and St Mark’s, looking west to the campanile, with the two free-standing ancient Byzantine pillars known as the Pilastri Acritani (seen on the left in the present study but not in the associated watercolour) in the foreground; it also includes a view within the Porta della Carta.

Inverted at the foot of the present page are what appear to be typically ad hoc financial notes:

The ‘3’ in the second line appears to overwrite a ‘4’, and the second digit or character is rather unclear.