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 Courtyard and Giant's Staircase of the Palazzo Ducale (Doge's Palace), Venice, with the Porta della Carta at the South-East Corner of the Basilica of San Marco (St Mark's) 1840

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Courtyard and Giant's Staircase of the Palazzo Ducale (Doge's Palace), Venice, with the Porta della Carta at the South-East Corner of the Basilica of San Marco (St Mark's)’ 1840
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 20 Recto:
The Courtyard and Giant’s Staircase of the Palazzo Ducale (Doge’s Palace), Venice, with the Porta della Carta at the South-East Corner of the Basilica of San Marco (St Mark’s) 1840
D31829
Turner Bequest CCCXIII 20
Pencil on cream wove paper, 123 x 173 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘3 | 14’ and ‘15’ bottom centre
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘20’ top right, ascending vertically
Stamped in black ‘CCCXIII – 22’ top right, ascending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Finberg later annotated his unspecific 1909 Inventory entry (‘Courtyard of Palace’): ‘Giants’ Stairway, Courtyd D’s Pal.’1 The Turner scholar C.F. Bell marked another copy: ‘Porta della Carta & Scala dei Giganti’.2 With the page turned horizontally, the viewpoint is the confined space in the north-east corner of the courtyard of the Palazzo Ducale (Doge’s Palace), hemmed in to the south by the Scala dei Giganti (Giant’s Staircase), with its huge statues of Mars and Neptune; the Arco Foscari entrance to the Porta della Carta arcade at the south-east corner of the Basilica is towards the right.
The numbers at the bottom centre, like those in another view on folio 18 recto (D31825), relate to the articulation of the staircase. See under folio 2 verso (D31794) for other views.

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
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 Courtyard and Giant’s Staircase of the Palazzo Ducale (Doge’s Palace), Venice, with the Porta della Carta at the South-East Corner of the Basilica of San Marco (St Mark’s) 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-courtyard-and-giants-staircase-of-the-palazzo-ducale-r1196723, accessed 19 September 2024.