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

As identified by the Turner scholars Cecilia Powell and Roland Courtot, this page contains four rough sketches of Montefiascone and Caprarola in the Viterbo province of Lazio, which Turner encountered as he travelled south towards Rome.1

The uppermost sketch features a stone pine in the foreground and the domed profile of Montefiascone’s cathedral beyond, known as the Basilica of Santa Margherita. Below is a cursory outline of a bridge, also possibly in Montefiascone, with another view of the town’s skyline beneath. See under folio 1 recto opposite (D21765) for a comparable view of the Basilica of Santa Margherita, together with a full list of Turner’s studies of Montefiascone in the present sketchbook.

The sketch at the bottom of the page, inverted relative to the views of Montefiascone above, was executed at a later stage of Turner’s journey. As identified by Courtot, it depicts a small summer palace known as the Casina del Piacere, located in the Renaissance gardens of the Palazzo Farnese in Caprarola.2 Built in the sixteenth century, the building served as a hunting lodge and pleasure palace, forming part of a larger complex of grottos, terraces, sculptures and fountains.3 Facing north-west, Turner’s viewpoint captures the building’s advantageous position amid rolling hills and woodland.

This is the first of a dozen works in the present sketchbook depicting the Palazzo Farnese, also known as Villa Caprarola. Commissioned in the 1520s by Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, later Pope Paul III, this pentagonal-shaped villa lies to the north of Caprarola and overlooks the town from an elevated hilltop position.4 For a full list of Turner’s studies of the Palazzo Farnese and Caprarola in the sketchbook, see under folio 4 verso (D21772).

Written in ink in the top-left corner, descending vertically, is the customary endorsement by the Executors of the Turner Bequest. It includes signatures by Charles Turner and Henry Scott Trimmer, together with the original schedule number of the sketchbook: ‘N^o 173 | H.S. Trimmer | C Turner’. Inscribed in pencil beneath are the initials of the two assessors, John Prescott Knight and Sir Charles Lock Eastlake, which appear as ‘C.L.E.’ and ‘JPK’. In the top-right corner, descending vertically, is the pencil inscription ‘S109’, alongside ‘CCXXXVI’ stamped in black.