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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1836-47 Modern painter > Venice, Austria and Southern Germany ... > Venice and Botzen Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner The Rio and Ponte della Pietà, Venice, with the Church of San Giorgio Maggiore in the Distance 1840

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Rio and Ponte della Pietà, Venice, with the Church of San Giorgio Maggiore in the Distance’ 1840
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 1 Verso:
The Rio and Ponte della Pietà, Venice, with the Church of San Giorgio Maggiore in the Distance 1840
D31792
Turner Bequest CCCXIII 1a
Pencil on cream wove paper, 173 x 123 mm
Partial watermark ‘J. Wha’
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘Ponte della [?Dutro] | La Pieta’ towards bottom left
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
With the page turned horizontally, the view is south-south-west along the Rio della Pietà, off the Riva degli Schiavoni, where the Ponte della Pietà crosses in the middle distance. Deceptively prominent, as if just beyond the bridge, is the familiar campanile of San Giorgio Maggiore, on its island across the Bacino, with three arched gables to its left and the nearest of the slender twin domes above the church’s roof immediately to its right, with the main dome shown too close. As with the view in the opposite direction on the recto (D31791), the viewpoint seems to be the bridge along the Calle de la Pietà.
Presumably because of the unfamiliarity of the subject and the presence of the readily recognisable domes and campanile of San Marco (St Mark’s) opposite (D31793), Finberg called the present page ‘Canal, with Campanile and St. Mark’s in distance’,1 albeit later noting: ‘Side Canal, with Campe. & St Marks (or S. Giorgio) beyond’.2 The Turner scholar C.F. Bell questioned the St Mark’s identification without offering another.3
1
Finberg 1909, II, p.1009.
2
Undated MS note by Finberg (died 1939) in interleaved copy of Finberg 1909, Prints and Drawings Room, Tate Britain, II, opposite p.1009.
3
Undated MS note by Bell (died 1966) in copy of Finberg 1909, Prints and Drawings Room, Tate Britain, II, p.1009.
Technical notes:
There is a greenish stain at the top centre owing to the proximity of the green leather loop secured under the front pastedown preceding this leaf (D41118).

Matthew Imms
September 2018

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘The Rio and Ponte della Pietà, Venice, with the Church of San Giorgio Maggiore in the Distance 1840 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, September 2018, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2019, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-the-rio-and-ponte-della-pieta-venice-with-the-church-of-san-r1196686, accessed 25 April 2024.