The Campo Santo
J. M. W. Turner·1842
Historical Context
The Campo Santo from 1842 depicts Venice's island cemetery, a subject that resonated with Turner's late preoccupation with mortality and the passage of time. The painting was shown at the Royal Academy alongside works by the young John Ruskin, his future champion. The work was shown at the Royal Academy, where Turner sent work consistently for fifty years; his exhibits provoked both admiration and controversy for their progressive dissolution of conventional form into atmosphere.
Technical Analysis
Turner dissolves the cemetery island into atmospheric light, using the flat lagoon and luminous sky to create a meditation on impermanence rendered in his most ethereal late manner.
Look Closer
- ◆Look at the island cemetery itself — the Campo Santo of Venice visible across the lagoon as a low, flat form with the characteristic cypress trees that mark it as a place of burial.
- ◆Notice the flat lagoon stretching between the viewer and the island — Turner uses the expanse of water to create a meditative distance, the cemetery separate from the living city by the reflective lagoon.
- ◆Observe the atmospheric treatment of the pale sky and water — Turner uses the bleached, almost colorless quality of a Venetian lagoon morning to create a mood of peaceful melancholy.
- ◆Find the church of San Michele on the island — the white-walled church and its cypress trees barely distinguishable from each other within the overall pale luminosity of Turner's late manner.
.jpg&width=600)