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 > St Peter's Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner St Peter's and the Castel Sant'Angelo, Rome, from Monte Mario 1819

Image 1 of 2
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘St Peter's and the Castel Sant'Angelo, Rome, from Monte Mario’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 12 Verso:
St Peter’s and the Castel Sant’Angelo, Rome, from Monte Mario 1819
D16180
Turner Bequest CLXXXVIII 12 a
Pencil on white wove paper, 114 x 189 mm
Inscribed by the artist in pencil ‘Light’ to left of tree trunk, bottom left
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Turner made a number of on-the-spot sketches and more elaborate drawings of the view of Rome from Monte Mario. This page depicts part of the view looking south towards St Peter’s and the Castel Sant’Angelo. The building glimpsed at the far right-hand edge of the sketch meanwhile is probably the Villa Madama, a sixteenth-century suburban residence built on the eastern slopes of Monte Mario, see folio 13 verso (D16182). The eaves of the roofline correspond to those more clearly depicted in another drawing (see Tate D16352; Turner Bequest CLXXXIX 26).
As Finberg identified, the viewpoint of this sketch is very close to a more detailed tonal composition in the Roman Colour Studies sketchbook (Turner Bequest CLXXXIX 31; Tate D16357).1 This in turn provided the basis for a finished watercolour, Rome, from Monte Mario c.1820 (private collection), painted on Turner’s return to England, for his friend and patron, Walter Fawkes.2
For a general discussion of Turner’s views from Monte Mario see folio 9 verso (D16174).

Nicola Moorby
September 2008

1
Finberg 1909, vol.I, p.558
2
Andrew Wilton, The Life and Work of J.M.W. Turner, Fribourg 1979, no.719.

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘St Peter’s and the Castel Sant’Angelo, Rome, from Monte Mario 1819 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, September 2008, 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-st-peters-and-the-castel-santangelo-rome-from-monte-mario-r1139689, accessed 22 November 2024.