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

Finberg later annotated his 1909 Inventory entry (‘The Piazza, with Campanile, &c.: Night’), crossing out ‘&c.’ and adding ‘& S. Marks’.1 The Turner scholar C.F. Bell marked his own copy: ‘scaffolding on cuspide’.2 The view is south down the Piazzetta from the Piazza San Marco (St Mark’s Square), with the Basilica and Palazzo Ducale (Doge’s Palace) to the left and the campanile in front of the Libreria Sansoviniana at the centre, with the Procuratie Nuove running to the right. In the foreground is the silhouette of one of the three soaring flagpoles aligned with the front of the Basilica. The upper stages of the campanile are likewise in shadow, revealing the profile of the tiered scaffolding noted by Bell, an important factor in dating such views to 1840 (see the Tour introduction).

This is a simplified, pictorial composition, focusing on the effects of light and shade to evoke a night scene with strong blues in the shadows, cast by the moonlight which forms a halo around the campanile and illuminates the ghostly finial at the left. The darkness is also mitigated by artificial light in the right distance and in the booth towards the left, around which a crowd has gathered. This incident recalls the puppet show in the Piazza in the large oil painting Juliet and her Nurse, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1836 (private collection; engraved in 1842 as ‘St Mark’s Place, Venice’: Tate impression T05188).3

Compare two variants (Tate D32250, D32256; Turner Bequest CCCXIX 2, 8), and a night scene ‘of festivity’4 from the far end of the Piazzetta (D32220; CCCXVIII 1). Lindsay Stainton has called them ‘reminiscent of the compositions of the famous Venetian view painters, notably Canaletto and Guardi’,5 while Ian Warrell has described the three Piazza views, with their ‘progressively more intense blues’, as seeming ‘to chart the shift from evening into night, making manifest how the Piazza vibrated with the animation of fickle crowds, oscillating between brightly illuminated puppet shows and the surrounding cafés’.6

Four contemporary pencil studies with white highlights on a folded sheet of buff-grey paper also show similar views (Tate D32192–D32195; Turner Bequest CCCCVIII 13a–d).

Technical notes:

The sheet was torn somewhat irregularly down the right-hand side. The freely applied colour only extends as far as the fold. It is a moot and ultimately inconsequential point as to whether Turner worked on the composition while the adjoining part of the intact sheet was folded behind, or while the already jagged edge was tucked away.

Ian Warrell has observed that Tate D32252 (Turner Bequest CCCXIX 4), a similarly sized sheet used vertically for an interior view of St Mark’s Basilica, was ‘formerly attached at top edge’ to the present work. They are among numerous 1840 Venice works he has noted as being on ‘Grey-brown paper produced by an unknown maker (possibly ... a batch made at Fabriano [Italy])’;1 for numerous red-brown Fabriano sheets used for similar subjects, see for example under Tate D32224 (Turner Bequest CCCXVIII 5).

Warrell noted the grey-brown sheets as being torn into two formats: nine sheets of approximately 148 x 232 mm (Tate D32220, D32249–D32250, D32252–D32253, D32255–D32258; Turner Bequest CCCXVIII 1, CCCXIX 1, 2, 4, 5, 7–10), and seven of twice the size, at about 231 x 295 mm (Tate D32223, D32226, D32228–D32229, D32231, D32233, D32242 (Turner Bequest CCCXVIII 4, 7, 9, 10, 12, 14, 23).

Verso:

Blank; inscribed by Turner in ink ‘[?10]’ top left (largely obscured by present mount but recorded by Finberg as ‘10’1); inscribed in pencil ‘CCCXIX.10’ bottom right. For the artist’s various annotations to his 1840 Venice sheets, see the overall Introduction to the tour.