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 Views of Venice from the Canale di San Marco near the Ponte della Veneta Marina, Including San Giorgio Maggiore, Santa Maria della Salute, and the Campanile and Basilica of San Marco (St Mark's) 1840

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Views of Venice from the Canale di San Marco near the Ponte della Veneta Marina, Including San Giorgio Maggiore, Santa Maria della Salute, and the Campanile and Basilica of San Marco (St Mark's)’ 1840
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 23 Verso:
Views of Venice from the Canale di San Marco near the Ponte della Veneta Marina, Including San Giorgio Maggiore, Santa Maria della Salute, and the Campanile and Basilica of San Marco (St Mark’s) 1840
D31836
Turner Bequest CCCXIII 23a
Pencil on cream wove paper, 123 x 173 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Finberg later annotated his 1909 Inventory entry (‘Views from Canal of St. Mark’s’): ‘S. Giorgio &c’.1 The Turner scholar C.F. Bell marked another copy: ‘Panoramas from a gondola’.2 There are various, somewhat disjointed elements here, drawn with the page turned horizontally, from the Canale di San Marco about level with the Ponte della Veneta Marina (see the recto; D31835).
The upper of the two main views shows the prospect westwards towards the Isola di San Giorgio Maggiore and the church of that name on the left, with Santa Maria della Salute in the distance at the centre, and the campanile and domes of the Basilica of San Marco (St Mark’s) on the right. It is not clear how the waterfront detail above at the outer edge above relates to it.
Below the centre, St Mark’s is shown again at the left (complete with over-emphatic scaffolding around the spire), with the waterfront advancing along the Riva degli Schiavoni past the church of the Pietà at the centre, with the campanili of San Zaccaria to its left and Sant’Antonin to its right. Below is another detail of houses along the waterfront in the San Biagio neighbourhood.

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..

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Views of Venice from the Canale di San Marco near the Ponte della Veneta Marina, Including San Giorgio Maggiore, Santa Maria della Salute, and the Campanile and 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-views-of-venice-from-the-canale-di-san-marco-near-the-ponte-r1196730, accessed 20 September 2024.