San Benedetto Looking towards Fusina

San Benedetto Looking towards Fusina on panel, painted around 1813, was produced before Turner's first visit to Venice in 1819, making it one of his imagined Venetian views constructed from prints and the writings of previous travellers. The specific viewpoint — from the island of San Benedetto across the open lagoon toward the mainland at Fusina — was one he would later paint directly from observation, and the comparison between this pre-visit imagining and the later painted versions reveals how accurately he had reconstructed the essential visual character of the Venetian lagoon from second-hand sources. The panel support, smaller than his typical canvas, suggests a work made for a private rather than exhibition context. Turner's pre-Italy Venetian paintings are important documents of how artistic knowledge and imaginative reconstruction could anticipate direct observation: when he finally arrived in Venice six years later, he found confirmation of what he had already partly understood.

Turner renders the lagoon with extraordinary atmospheric sensitivity, using pale, luminous tones and the flat expanse of water to create a vision of Venice floating in golden light.