Joseph Mallord William Turner Interior of Santa Costanza, Rome 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 62 Recto:
Interior of Santa Costanza, Rome 1819
D16431
Turner Bequest CXC 25
Turner Bequest CXC 25
Pencil and grey watercolour on white wove paper, 130 x 255 mm
Inscribed by the artist in pencil ‘24’ bottom of sketch’
Inscribed by ?John Ruskin in red ink ‘25’ top right and by an unknown hand in pencil ‘25’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CXC 25’ bottom right
Inscribed by ?John Ruskin in red ink ‘25’ top right and by an unknown hand in pencil ‘25’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CXC 25’ bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
References
1909
A.J. Finberg, A Complete Inventory of the Drawings of the Turner Bequest, London 1909, vol.I, p.565, as ‘Interior of a rotunda (? S. Stefano Rotondo).’.
1984
Cecilia Powell, ‘Turner on Classic Ground: His Visits to Central and Southern Italy and Related Paintings and Drawings’, unpublished Ph.D thesis, Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London 1984, p.428, as ‘Interior of S. Costanza’.
As Cecilia Powell first correctly identified, this sketch depicts an interior view of Santa Costanza, an early Christian fourth-century church which stands near Sant’Agnese fuori le mura on the Via Nomentana, north-east of the historic centre of Rome. The church was originally designed as a mausoleum for Constantina, daughter of the Emperor Constantine, who was later canonised as Santa Costanza. Turner’s sketch shows the view looking towards the sarcophagus (a replica of the original which was moved to the Vatican Museums in 1790) which sits in the centre of a circular arcade of twelve pairs of granite columns (hence Turner’s note ‘24’).1 The diagrammatic detail at the bottom centre of the page is probably a rough plan of the arrangement of these columns. In the bottom left-hand corner is a small study of a sculptural ornamental, possibly from one of the capitals. Turner may have known Piranesi’s print of the interior of Santa Costanza from the Vedute di Roma 1756.2
Nicola Moorby
June 2009
How to cite
Nicola Moorby, ‘Interior of Santa Costanza, Rome 1819 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, June 2009, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2012, https://www