Joseph Mallord William Turner Two Views: Villa Taverna, Frascati; and Buildings on a Hill 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 15 Verso:
Two Views: Villa Taverna, Frascati; and Buildings on a Hill 1819
D15322
Turner Bequest CLXXXII 15 a
Turner Bequest CLXXXII 15 a
Pencil on white wove paper, 189 x 113 mm
Inscribed by the artist in pencil ‘Monte Dragone’ top right, ‘olives’ and ‘Villa Taverno’ centre left of sketch at top and ‘If Tusculum where is Wilson’s Picture taken from’ bottom left of sketch
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.536, as ‘ “Villa of Teverone” on a hill with “Monte Dragone” in distance; also the following note: – “If Tusculum where is Wilson’s Picture taken from”; also slight sketch of a castle (?)’.
1979
Andrew Wilton, The Life and Work of J.M.W. Turner, Fribourg 1979, p.384 no.731.
1981
William Chubb, ‘Turner’s “Cicero at his Villa”’, Burlington Magazine, vol.123, July 1981, p.418 note 4, reproduced fig.35 p.420.
1983
David Hill, ‘Book review of Louis Hawes, “Presences of Nature: British Landscape 1780–1830” and Ronald Paulson, “Literary Landscape: Turner and Constable” ’, in Turner Society News, no.26, January / February 1983, p.4.
1984
Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll, The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner, revised ed., New Haven and London 1984, p.234 no.381.
1984
Cecilia Powell, ‘Turner and the Bandits: ‘Lake Albano’ rediscovered’, Turner Studies, Summer 1984, vol.3, no.2, p.23.
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Powell, ‘Turner on Classic Ground: His Visits to Central and Southern Italy and Related Paintings and Drawings’, unpublished Ph.D thesis, Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London 1984, pp.194 note 102, 195 note 107, 196 note 110, 262 note 123.
1987
Cecilia Powell, Turner in the South: Rome, Naples, Florence, New Haven and London 1987, pp.[88] notes 78 and 79, 89 note 81, 176 note 18.
1990
Kathleen Nicholson, Turner’s Classical Landscapes: Myth and Meaning, Princeton 1990, p.15.
2000
David Hill, Joseph Mallord William Turner: Le Mont-Blanc et la Vallée d’Aoste, exhibition catalogue, Museo Archeologico Regionale, Aosta / Musée Archéologique Régional, Aoste 2000, p.295.
2008
Nicola Moorby, ‘Un tesoro italiano: i taccuini di Turner’, in James Hamilton, Nicola Moorby, Christopher Baker and others, Turner e l’Italia, exhibition catalogue, Palazzo dei Diamanti, Ferrara 2008, pp.100, 105 note 14.
2009
Nicola Moorby, ‘An Italian Treasury: Turner’s sketchbooks’, in James Hamilton, Nicola Moorby, Christopher Baker and others, Turner & Italy, exhibition catalogue, National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh 2009, pp.113, 154–5 note 15.
William Chubb has identified the location of the main sketch on this page (at the top with the book held in portrait format) as the Villa Taverna (also known as the Villa Parisi, or the Villa Borghese) in Frascati, approximately three miles north of Lake Albano.1 Frascati is famous for its summer residences built for the papal nobility, and the seventeenth-century Villa Taverna is one of a string of estates which lie to the south-east of the town, in an area which takes its name from the ancient settlement of Tusculum. Within his sketch, Turner has indicated another estate, situated immediately above, the Villa ‘Monte Dragone’ or Mondragone, a name which refers to the heraldic dragon in the coat of arms of Pope Gregory XIII. For other studies of this villa see folios 27 verso, 29 and 81 verso (D15346, D15349 and D15451; Turner Bequest CLXXXII 27a, 29 and 80a).
As so often during Turner’s Italian travels, his experience of a site prompted references to his artistic forbears. His self-addressed question inscribed underneath the sketch, ‘If Tusculum where is Wilson’s Picture taken from’, refers to Richard Wilson’s painting, Cicero and his two Friends, Atticus and Quintus, at his Villa at Arpinum, also known as Cicero and his Friends at his Tusculum Villa, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1770, which Turner could have seen in the collection of Sir Watkyn Williams Wynn as early as 1799.2
The rest of the page contains a slight sketch of some buildings on the side of a hill, possibly part of the town of Marino, the subject of the drawing on the opposite page, see folio 16 (D15323).
Nicola Moorby
May 2008
How to cite
Nicola Moorby, ‘Two Views: Villa Taverna, Frascati; and Buildings on a Hill 1819 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, May 2008, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2012, https://www