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 Santa Maria della Salute, the Dogana, and the Campanili of Santo Stefano and San Marco (St Mark's) from the Bacino, Venice; San Giorgio Maggiore 1840

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Santa Maria della Salute, the Dogana, and the Campanili of Santo Stefano and San Marco (St Mark's) from the Bacino, Venice; San Giorgio Maggiore’ 1840
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 39 Verso:
Santa Maria della Salute, the Dogana, and the Campanili of Santo Stefano and San Marco (St Mark’s) from the Bacino, Venice; San Giorgio Maggiore 1840
D31867
Turner Bequest CCCXIII 39a
Pencil on cream wove paper, 123 x 173 mm
Partial watermark ‘J. Wha’
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘St Stephano’ top centre
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Finberg later annotated his 1909 Inventory entry (‘View from S. Giorgio Maggiore. – “S. Stephano,” S. Maria della Salute, &c.’), adding ‘which it is not CFB’ after ‘S. Stephano’.1 The initials are those of Turner scholar C.F. Bell, who marked another copy with the same phrase.2 With the page turned horizontally, there are two subjects, opposite ways up and in opposite directions.
Towards the gutter is a view north-westwards from off the west side of the Isola di San Giorgio Maggiore, looking across the Bacino to the domes of Santa Maria della Salute and the porch of the Dogana. To their right, on the far side of the Grand Canal, Turner has labelled a tall campanile ‘St Stephano’, and there seems no reason to query this, as Bell did. The less conspicuous, converging verticals to the right again may represent the spire of San Moisè; towards the right is the unmistakable profile of the campanile of San Marco (St Mark’s) to the north, with one of the domes of the Basilica below it.
The other way up, towards the outer edge, is a view from a similar position, east-south-east to the Isola di San Giorgio Maggiore, presenting the familiar elevation of the island’s church and associated buildings.

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, p.1011.
2
Undated MS note by Bell (died 1966) in copy of Finberg 1909, Prints and Drawings Room, Tate Britain, II, p.1011.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Santa Maria della Salute, the Dogana, and the Campanili of Santo Stefano and San Marco (St Mark’s) from the Bacino, Venice; San Giorgio Maggiore 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-santa-maria-della-salute-the-dogana-and-the-campanili-of-r1196762, accessed 19 September 2024.