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JMW Turner, 'Venice from the Porch of the Madonna della Salute', 1835

 


It is fitting that Turner would create a depiction of Venice so focused on colour, through his blending and manipulating of a complex palette. One of the most deeply ingrained, longstanding paragoni, or debates, in the history of art originated between Venice and Florence, and specifically between the Venetian colore (colour) and Florentine disegno (drawing) during the Renaissance. Turner continues that tradition through his own Venetian landscapes, firmly sitting on the colore side of the artistic fence. Usually seen as a man able to master even the most sublime, all-encompassing, over-powering forces of nature in his artworks, here Turner demonstrates that he can do the opposite, portraying Venice as an Elysian Fields of idyllic peace, where man and nature work perfectly together. 

The last gasp of disegno in Turner's view of Venice is seen only when the eye zooms in on the man-made forces evident in the work. Including the campanile of San Marco's square just rising up in the distance, as well as the Church of the Madonna della Salute, these monochrome buildings and facades are worked in a sketchy hand. This is particularly the case for the pedimented front of the church on the right-hand side, almost reminiscent of detailed, architectural pencil drawings. However, the colour of Turner's work soon comes to dominate as a viewer zooms out. The exquisite reflections on the Grand Canal take up nearly half of the painting's foreground, punctuated by the boats that drift to an unknown location. The dark reflection from the diagonally placed gondola gliding to the centre of the work is particularly forceful, as the shadows seep into the blues and greens of the waters below. Yet the grace, harmony and balance of the work are not lost, despite these moments of dark colouration. 

Turner continues to define Venice as a utopia, the lens through which many English visitors viewed the city and espoused by Ruskin in his Stones of Venice, comparing the city to a kind of paradise or Eden. It was reiterated by Max Schulz who described the mythical identification of Venice as the Blessed Isles inhabited by mythological heroes. There was a longstanding tradition of depicting Venice this way, notably in the work of Canaletto, but also by Dutch masters such as Jan van Goyen, who Katharine Baetjer persuasively argued in 2007 was of greater influence on Turner. However, through his blending of sun-drenched colours, there is a peacefulness to Turner's Venice which is unmatched. The bright, Titian blues of the expansive, vast open sky blur delicately into drifting clouds, painted with such a light hand that they become almost translucent and all the more realistic. Even man and nature blend together, as the tops of sails merge into the clouds above. Meanwhile, the viewer is constantly pulled back to the centre of the work through Turner's use of a harmonious perspective to balance the composition. This is an endless, expansive, utopian nature which for Turner, is also an unusually finished work of art, precisely rendered and supremely coloured. 

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