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 Church of San Moisè, Venice, across the Ponte San Moisè 1840

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Church of San Moisè, Venice, across the Ponte San Moisè’ 1840
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 11 Recto:
The Church of San Moisè, Venice, across the Ponte San Moisè 1840
D31811
Turner Bequest CCCXIII 11
Pencil on cream wove paper, 123 x 173 mm
Partial watermark ‘J. Wh’
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘S Moise’ bottom left, and ‘Campo | S Moise’ below left of centre, on side of building
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘11’ bottom left, descending vertically
Stamped in black ‘CCCXIII – 11’ bottom left, descending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The Turner scholar C.F. Bell annotated Finberg’s 1909 Inventory entry (‘“San Moisè.”’): ‘from the Campo across the Ponte S. Moisè’.1 Made with the page turned vertically, the view is west to the heavily ornamented Baroque entrance front of the church, partly obscured by the steep steps of the bridge to the campo of the same name, from what is now the Calle Larga XXII Marzo. As Robert Upstone has noted, the church was virtually ‘opposite Turner’s hotel room window’ in the Hotel Europa (Palazzo Giustinian) to its south, and the campanile features in a contemporary watercolour rooftop panorama from there (Tate D32140; Turner Bequest CCCXVI 3).2
To the right, the view is down the Rio di San Moisè towards the entrance of the Grand Canal, with the familiar porch of the Dogana lightly indicated beyond. A modernist wing of the large hotel running down to the Grand Canal now occupies the central corner site, and the small bridge towards the right has gone. The top stages of the church’s campanile and pediment are continued upwards onto folio 10 verso opposite (D31810). There is another view towards the Dogana from a little further south on folio 12 recto (D32813).

Matthew Imms
September 2018

1
Undated MS note by Bell (died 1966) in copy of Finberg 1909, Prints and Drawings Room, Tate Britain, II, p.1009.
2
Upstone 1993, p.39.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘The Church of San Moisè, Venice, across the Ponte San Moisè 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-church-of-san-moise-venice-across-the-ponte-san-moise-r1196705, accessed 25 April 2024.