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 Bacino, Venice, from off the Isola di San Giorgio, with the Zitelle, Redentore and Santa Maria della Salute; the Salute, with the Campanili of Santi Cosma e Damiano and San Moisè Beyond 1840

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Bacino, Venice, from off the Isola di San Giorgio, with the Zitelle, Redentore and Santa Maria della Salute; the Salute, with the Campanili of Santi Cosma e Damiano and San Moisè Beyond’ 1840
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 15 Verso:
The Bacino, Venice, from off the Isola di San Giorgio, with the Zitelle, Redentore and Santa Maria della Salute; the Salute, with the Campanili of Santi Cosma e Damiano and San Moisè Beyond 1840
D31820
Turner Bequest CCCXIII 15a
Pencil on cream wove paper, 123 x 173 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘Redettor’ centre left
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Finberg later annotated his 1909 Inventory entry (‘Views of Venice from the Canale de S. Marco’): ‘3 sketches: (1) Redentore in dist., with Dog. & Salute on right’.1 He added: ‘Redentore | JPH’.2 The initials are those of John Postle Heseltine (1843–1929), an etcher and collector whose suggestions Finberg occasionally acknowledged in this way. The Turner scholar C.F. Bell marked another copy, amending ‘“Redetta”’ to read ‘Redentore’ and adding: ‘4 panoramas from gondola’.3 This is in reference to the sequence across this page and folio 16 recto opposite (D31821).
With the page turned horizontally, the two upper drawings form a somewhat compressed panorama from near the west front of the church of San Giorgio Maggiore on the island of the same name, with the buildings of the adjacent monastery to its south at the top left, and then the domes of the churches of the Zitelle (at the top centre) and Redentore on the Isola della Giudecca stretching away to the south-west; in the central drawing, Turner has repeated and labelled the latter church, and turned right to continue the view west across the laterally condensed Canale della Giudecca, to the domes of Santa Maria della Salute above the porch of the Dogana at the entrance to the Grand Canal.
Below, the other way up and somewhat awkwardly crossing the gutter to D31821, is another view towards the Salute and Dogana from about the same point, this time labelled (on the other page) to indicate the tower of Santi Cosma e Damiano towards the far end of the Giudecca on the left, and the campanile of San Moisè, north of the Grand Canal, on the right. The small, inconspicuous sun is indicated setting towards the right.

Matthew Imms
September 2018

1
Undated MS note by Finberg (died 1939) in interleaved copy of Finberg 1909, Prints and Drawings Room, Tate Britain, II, opposite p.1010.
2
Ibid.
3
Undated MS note by Bell (died 1966) in copy of Finberg 1909, Prints and Drawings Room, Tate Britain, II, p.1010.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘The Bacino, Venice, from off the Isola di San Giorgio, with the Zitelle, Redentore and Santa Maria della Salute; the Salute, with the Campanili of Santi Cosma e Damiano and San Moisè Beyond 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-bacino-venice-from-off-the-isola-di-san-giorgio-with-the-r1196714, accessed 24 April 2024.