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 Pietro in Castello, Venice, from the Canale di San Pietro, with a Tower on the Arsenale Perimeter 1840

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Church of San Pietro in Castello, Venice, from the Canale di San Pietro, with a Tower on the Arsenale Perimeter’ 1840
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 26 Recto:
The Church of San Pietro in Castello, Venice, from the Canale di San Pietro, with a Tower on the Arsenale Perimeter 1840
D31840
Turner Bequest CCCXIII 26
Pencil on cream wove paper, 123 x 173 mm
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘26’ top right, ascending vertically
Stamped in black ‘CCCXIII – 26’ top right, ascending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The Turner scholar C.F. Bell annotated Finberg’s 1909 Inventory entry (‘Church, &c.’): ‘San Pietro di Castello?’1 This loose drawing, made with the page turned horizontally, appears to show the domed church and its campanile looking east from the Canale di San Pietro; the upper stages of the tower are omitted. This would make the structure to the left one of the outer towers of the Arsenale shipyard complex beyond, to the north-west beyond the mouth of the Canale di Porta Nova, although its scale is exaggerated.
The church is seen in the distance on folio 45 recto (D31878), within a short sequence of hurried sketches around the perimeter of the Arsenale, and likely on folios 46 verso and 47 recto (D31881–D31882). It may also be seen in a slight drawing on folio 27 verso (D31843).

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.1010.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘The Church of San Pietro in Castello, Venice, from the Canale di San Pietro, with a Tower on the Arsenale Perimeter 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-pietro-in-castello-venice-from-the-canale-r1196735, accessed 19 September 2024.