Venice as seen through the eyes of Turner

It was Don’t Look Now that turned me on to Venice. Not the bedroom scenes, at the time the most subtly erotic ever filmed, but, to combine Shelley, Dickens, Mann and Ruskin all in one: its peopled labyrinth, its flattering and suspect beauty, half fairytale, half tourist trap, a strange dream upon the water, a ghost upon the sands of the sea.

Within no time I was there, arriving by water as one should, and not via land-bound Treviso, the airline’s false "Venice" that means one’s first vision of the city is over the long causeway to the railway station. Even when that railway was first built, arriving in Venice by rail was disparaged. As early as 1845, John Ruskin complained: "The city now looks as romantic as Liverpool at the end of the dockyard wall." Well, as a native of Liverpool, I must confess to one or two romantic moments at the end of that dockyard wall. But I’ll let that pass.

"We must hurry to the Frari before it closes, to see the Tintoretto," our self-appointed expert advised. Our expert was wrong, we had hours to spare before the Frari closed. He was wrong on other things, remarking how lucky we were to have a private launch to Torcello to which, he said, there was no public transport. I later noticed Torcello flagged on the vaporetto, the water-bus, on the waterfront. I smiled and said nothing.

I’ve returned to Venice in all seasons since, but that first November visit was magical. I rose at five each day to watch the sun conquer the lazy mist over the lagoon, walked the night in thick fog till two in the morning, ever losing my way but accepting that it was a fine thing to do, forced to negotiate parts of the city never dreamed of. En route I encountered much of the mystery of the peopled labyrinth. Dickens wrote: "I never saw the thing before that I should be so afraid to describe." It’s a wonderful fear.

I was back in Venice recently, this time with real experts. The Tate Gallery, in co-operation with the Magic Group, has entered the travel business and is offering cultural tours, and a couple of its curators were on hand to guide us through Turner’s Venice to mark the current exhibition, Turner and Venice, at Tate Britain. And - to press the point - I arrived by water, via a flight from Edinburgh with British Midland, who have quietly begun flying to Venice and at a price that, on the day, was much less than that of travelling via Stansted with the so-called cut-price airlines.

Joseph Mallord William Turner visited Venice three times, first in 1819 when he was already 44 years old, again in 1833 and, at bus-pass age, in 1840. His longest stay was less than two weeks and, over the three trips, he spent just four weeks in all in the city, but his first visit alone filled 160 pages of his sketchbooks, some of them with a number of separate drawings. Turner was a working artist, well acquainted with and admiring of the works of Canaletto. Prior to that first visit, he had produced watercolours and prints based on other artists’ sketches. The fruit of his own three visits was more than 500 pages crammed with illustration, more than 1,000 visual reminders in all.

By chance we were billeted out in the lagoon and each morning as we travelled water-borne towards the city, our first view was a Turner painting, across the basin to the Doge’s Palace and the campanile of San Marco with, as in that painting, a huddle of boats, these days of the Customs, in the foreground at the corner of the Giudecca island.

Around that corner we were first guided to the Redentore, the principal church of the Giudecca, built by Palladio in the late 16th century in thanksgiving for the delivery of the city from the plague. Every year thereafter the Doge processed from the Zattere, the quayside on the facing island of Dorsodoro, over a bridge of boats to attend Mass in commemoration. The custom continues to this day on the third Sunday of each July. Turner was clearly aware of the tradition and certainly crossed the wide Giudecca canal to visit the church, for a number of his sketches and paintings are of the Zattere, the Dogana or Customs House at the tip of that island, and of St Marks, all as seen from the Redentore itself. The Giudecca, despite its stunning views of Venice and its harbouring, at its eastern end, of the Cipriani, one of the city’s most luxurious hotels, was until recently far from high on a visitor’s list, its western end dominated by the ruins of a 19th-century sugar mill. After years of procrastination this is rapidly being rebuilt and converted into a posh hotel and a number of even posher apartments.

From the Giudecca we crossed one day direct to the Zattere opposite and, on another, circling the Dorsoduro, entered the Grand Canal at the upper end of its reversed "S". Turner stayed directly on the Grand Canal on all three visits, the first at what was then the Albergo Leon Bianco, a little way south of the Rialto bridge. The hotel had been recommended by James Hakewill, author of A Picturesque Tour of Italy, who filled a whole notebook with suggestions for Turner’s itinerary. It’s now known as the Palazzo Cavalli and is the headquarters of the traffic police.

Shortly after this first visit to Venice, Turner attracted the patronage of Hugh Johnstone Monro, a wealthy Scottish landowner and amateur painter who became an important collector of the artist’s work. Monro offered to fund a second trip in exchange for one of the resulting watercolours. Whether this offer was inspired by Monro’s seeing Turner’s paintings of Venice at the Royal Academy in the spring of 1833 or whether Turner was encouraged to exhibit these works when he realised their value following Monro’s offer is unclear. But should Monro’s offer seem generous, Turner’s watercolours were even then not cheap. Ian Worrell, curator of the Tate exhibition, has calculated that it would have taken a contemporary workman labouring 69 hours a week, 11 years to earn the price of a single painting.

On his second visit in 1833 and the final visit of 1840, Turner stayed further down the Grand Canal, just before it opens up into the Basin of St Marks, in what was then the Hotel Europa (the present Hotel Europa is in a different building, just a little way back up the Grand Canal). The old Europa is now the Palazzo Giustinian, the headquarters of the Venice Biennale. This is almost opposite the well-known landmarks of the Dogana and the adjoining church of Santa Maria della Salute, built, like the Redentore, in thanksgiving for deliverance from an earlier plague of 1630. This is also celebrated with a bridge of boats, but in November of each year. George Eliot, Verdi and Proust lodged too at the Europa, and it was from its steps that Turner made a number of watercolours and sketches, later worked up into some of his most famous paintings, including the Grand Canal of 1837, a lively, heavily populated work that is part of the Tate exhibition. The painting was once owned by John Ruskin, the critic and Turner enthusiast, but it has not been seen in Britain since 1899.

Turner’s works encompass all the major buildings around the Piazza San Marco and the Bacino di San Marco as well as the vivid red Arsenale at the east end of the island and a series of views of and near the Rialto and along a Grand Canal that often appears as crowded as today, though with boats moored at anchor in the middle of the waterway where nowadays no craft is ever idle. He did not, though, confine himself to the exterior of the city. Hakewill, who had suggested the Leon Bianco for Turner’s first visit, also indicated where Turner could find works by the great 16th-century painters Titian, Tintoretto and Veronese and pointed him to the Accademia and to the church of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari where, he said, Turner would re-discover Titian’s altarpiece of St Peter Martyr. Napoleon had looted this painting during his annexation of Venice and Turner had seen and admired it in the Louvre in 1802, but now it was back in Venice; Hakewill’s information was even more mistaken than the advice given me with respect to that church on my own first visit, and Turner hurried to the Frari to no avail. The altar-piece was, in fact, not there but in another gothic masterpiece, the church of Ss Giovanni e Paolo on the other side of the Grand Canal in the north of the city. Giovanni e Paolo is a short walk from the Fondamente Nuove, the northern waterfront of Venice, and Turner took that walk to make sketches of San Michele, the cemetery island opposite. San Michele is so full nowadays that, even if you obtain permission to be interred there, your corpse is allowed only ten years’ residence before the bones are lifted to make way for new arrivals.

Adjacent to the Frari in San Polo - the just slightly different name of the area may have been the cause of Hakewill’s confusion - is the Scuola di San Rocco. It was San Rocco, the patron saint of contagious diseases, who, according to legend, saved Venice from the plague and the school was established as a hospital for the sick. Tintoretto was commissioned to decorate the walls and ceilings and the paintings are among his greatest works. Turner, who, in the view of our Tate guide, was "no good at faces", thought highly of Tintoretto, a master of portraiture, and spent much time in the Scuola sketching and drawing. We too spent a considerable time there, contemplating not only Tintoretto’s huge masterpieces and, oddly enough, a small, almost Impressionist, still-life of apples, but also the extraordinary 17th-century wood-carvings of Francesco Pianta that line the walls of the Upper Hall. Many of the themes are far from religious: one depicts, lantern in hand, face covered, a cloak-and-dagger spy; another, armed with palette and brushes, is reputed to be a caricature of Tintoretto himself. Turner also crossed the narrow street to the church of San Rocco where there are further examples of Tintoretto’s work, most notably of San Rocco himself curing victims of the plague. I had seen the painting on earlier visits and I was reminded of the time when an old and venerable canon was attempting to explain its dedication to two American ladies who had little Italian and were confused by the Canon’s use of the word "pest". They appeared to be thinking the church was threatened by an attack of woodworm, but when I explained that "peste" was Italian for plague, the canon beamed in relief and led me to a room behind the altar where he opened a securely locked cupboard. He opened the casket inside to reveal what purported to be the remains of the saint himself. "Place your hand there," said the canon, "while I will bless you." I haven’t had the plague ever since.

Venice was built to be painted by Turner, someone once said. Constable, no great admirer, said that Turner seemed to paint with steam and Turner’s work has indeed been regarded as anticipating Impressionism. Try locating Turner’s later works in Venice, Ian Worrell claims, and you will find only stones and water. Turner himself responded to a critic, "Atmosphere is my style," Claude Debussy, whose best-known work is appropriately Clair de Lune - Moonlight - called him "the finest creator of mystery in the whole of art".

Touring with the Tate was an exceptional opportunity to have that mystery unravelled. At least a little ...

• The Turner and Venice exhibition at Tate Britain, London, runs until January 2004.

VENICE ESSENTIALS

How to get there

Sean Hignett travelled to Venice with Tate/Magic and bmi (British Midland) , which has fully serviced flights from Edinburgh to Venice, via Heathrow, from 103.50 (web-fare). For reservations call 0870-240-0318 or visit www.flybmi.com

What to see

Tate Venice tours are available from Magic Travel Group, eg two nights including B&B, watertaxi transfers, return flights and Tate Gallery pack (three-day vaporetto ticket, pass to various churches, Tate sketchbook with pencils, guidebook and walking itinerary devised by Tate curator) from 395, plus Edinburgh/Glasgow flight supplement. Reservations 0870-888-0220; www.magictravelgroup.co.uk

TRAVELLERS' TAKEAWAYS

Turner and Venice

TURNER and Venice, the major new exhibition at Tate Britain, features oil paintings made on several trips to the city between 1819 and 1840. The city was an enduring inspiration for Turner - just as his paintings have proved an inspiration to artists (and visitors to Venice) ever since.

Turner and Venice by Ian Warrell, Tate Publishing, 29.99, www.amazon.co.uk

This book, by the curator of the exhibition, is the perfect companion for your visit to the exhibition.

JMW Turner, The Burning of the Houses of Parliament Poster, 4.99, www.tate.org.uk

This poster is of one of Turner’s most famous paintings, depicting not Venice but the burning Houses of Parliament as seen from the banks of the Thames.

JMW Turner: Music Of His Time, 3.99, www.tesco.co.uk

In his 76 years, Turner lived through an artistic revolution - illustrated here by music from the likes of JC Bach and Chopin.

Turner Black On White Twist Pen, 99p, www.tate.org.uk

A perfect keepsake from the Turner and Venice exhibition. Jot down your own impressions with this pen inspired by the master.

Don’t Look Now, 9.99 at www.amazon.co.uk or 9 from www.ebay.co.uk

This film, an adaptation of the Daphne Du Maurier novel set in Venice, has a plot as labyrinthine as the back streets of the city itself. An eerie masterpiece, Don’t Look Now will give you a taste of the city’s chilling Gothic underbelly.

Lonely Planet Venice by Damien Simonis, 8.99, www.lonelyplanet.co.uk

Plan a trip by gondola through Venice’s lagoons, marvel at the mosaics or dance the night away at a masked ball. However you plan to spend your time in Venice, this guide highlights the best of Italy’s most magical city.