Juliet and her Nurse is an oil painting created by Joseph Mallord William Turner.[1] Painted in 1836, it depicts a view of Venice at dusk. The scene features a crowd of Venetians who have assembled in St. Mark's Square to watch fireworks exploding against a blue and yellow sky. On a balcony in the lower right corner stand Juliet and her nurse, two characters from the play Romeo and Juliet by English playwright William Shakespeare.[2] In a departure from Romeo and Juliet's Verona setting, Turner incongruously placed the characters in Venice instead.[3]
Turner's first visit to Venice was in 1819 and he made his second visit in 1833, where he appears to have taken a room with rooftop views. Juliet and her Nurse was painted from an elevated perspective overlooking St. Mark's Square to the east with St Mark's Campanile dominating the composition.[4] In 1842, it was engraved by George Hollis with the title St Mark's Place, Venice.[5]
When it was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1836, the painting received criticism due to its abstract elements. The Times remarked that the painting "set all the laws of that truth-telling science, both lineal and aerial, at defiance". A critic writing for the Literary Gazette complained about the placement of the two Shakespearean characters in the lower right corner, describing them as "perched, like sparrows, on a house-top". John Eagles writing for Blackwood's Magazine unfavourably critiqued the painting as "a strange jumble -- 'confusion worse confounded." John Ruskin wrote that the review had raised in him "black anger" and prompted him to write a response in defence of Turner. He wrote, "Turner is an exception to all rules... In a widely magnificent enthusiasm, he rushes through the ethereal dominions of the world of his own mind -- a place inhabited by the spirit of things... Turner thinks and feels in color; he cannot help doing so... Innumerable dogs are baying at the moon; do they think she will bate of her brightness, or abberate from the majesty of her path?"[6]
