J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > First Italian Tour 1819-20 > Tivoli to Rome Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Sketches of the Villa Adriana, Tivoli: including Details of the Large Baths and Praetorium 1819

Image 1 of 2
  • Enhanced image
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Sketches of the Villa Adriana, Tivoli: including Details of the Large Baths and Praetorium’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 33 Verso:
Sketches of the Villa Adriana, Tivoli: including Details of the Large Baths and Praetorium 1819
D14987
Turner Bequest CLXXIX 33 a
Pencil on white wove paper, 112 x 186 mm
Inscribed by the artist in pencil ‘walls’ bottom right of top left sketch
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Turner’s trip to Tivoli in 1819 included a detour to the Villa Adriana (Hadrian’s Villa), approximately one mile south-west of the town. He made several swift studies of the key buildings of interest, see folio 32 verso (D14985). This page records elements of several different parts. As Cecilia Powell first identified, the sketches in the top right-hand and bottom left-hand corners represent the Large Baths (Grande Terme) and the Praetorium (a pavilion with a panoramic view overlooking the estate) seen from a location on the path leading towards the Canopus.1 Similar views can be seen on folios 32 verso–33 (D14985–D14986). The sketch in the bottom right-hand corner appears to indicate the end corner of Praetorium seen from a point to the north of the vast substructures. Meanwhile, the details in the top left-hand corner depict part of the surviving decorative ceiling vault from one of the rooms in the Large Baths.2 The same fragment appears in a drawing by John Downman (1750–1824), In Hadrian’s Villa, Tivoli 1774 (Tate, T10434).

Nicola Moorby
January 2010

1
Powell 1984, p.410.
2
See William L. Macdonald and John A. Pinto, Hadrian’s Villa and Its Legacy, New Haven and London 1995, fig.188, p.[156].

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘Sketches of the Villa Adriana, Tivoli: including Details of the Large Baths and Praetorium 1819 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, January 2010, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2012, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-sketches-of-the-villa-adriana-tivoli-including-details-of-r1137619, accessed 16 December 2024.