J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours

Finberg later annotated his 1909 Inventory entry (‘The Albergo Reale di Danieli, &c.’): ‘Danieli’s, Ducal Palace with Campanile above, Zecca, etc.; and 2 o[the]r sketches’.1 The Turner scholar C.F. Bell marked another copy: ‘Ducal Palace (Campanile with scaffolding) | 3 panoramas’.2

With the page turned horizontally, there are three studies here. The most detailed shows the view westwards along the Riva degli Schiavoni, with the Hotel Danieli (Palazzo Dandolo) above the Ponte del Vin on the right, and the campanile of San Marco (St Mark’s) rising beyond the Palazzo Ducale (Doge’s Palace) towards the centre, with the scaffolding coinciding with Turner’s 1840 visit (see the Introduction to the tour).3 The domes of Santa Maria della Salute are lightly indicated beyond the cluster of masts on the Bacino towards the left, and at the top left Turner appears to have squeezed in the profile of San Giorgio Maggiore; in reality the church lay opposite the hotel, about ninety degrees to the left of the main axis of the view. For other views around the Hotel Danieli, see under folio 4 verso (D31798).

Below are two views of distant waterfronts, perhaps forming a panorama. The buildings have yet to be identified, but may be around the less populous western end of the Canale della Giudecca. Ian Warrell has noted that 1840 sketches such as those on folios 17 recto (D32823) and 30 verso–33 recto (D31849–D31854), and in the contemporary Venice; Passau to Würzburg book (Tate D31288–D31293; Turner Bequest CCCX 6a–9), show how Turner ‘really began to see that this previously neglected quarter offered original ways of seeing Venice’.4 Turner’s inconspicuous note, possibly ‘Lugo’, is similar to variations on folio 32 verso (D31853), labelling the bridge on the Giudecca’s Rio del Ponte Lungo (sic), near the church of the Redentore.