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

With the sketchbook turned horizontally, Turner produced this swift study of a hilltop town. Silhouetted against the sky are crenellated fortifications to the left, a church belltower near the centre, and buildings densely clustered to the right. A single-arched bridge is visible in the foreground.

At the bottom of the page are two minor views of a hilltop town, presumably the same site shown above, which Turner executed with the sketchbook rotated. His central inscription ‘O[?rv]’ presumably refers to the hilltop city of Orvieto in Terni. If correctly identified as such, this subject would fall out of sequence with the sketchbook’s overall itinerary, which begins just south of Florence and ends in Orvieto. For a more extensive exploration of Orvieto in the final section of the sketchbook, see folios 30 recto–38 verso (D21646–D21663). In the top-left corner is a slight topographical profile that has spilled over from folio 1 verso opposite (D21589).