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 > Naples: Rome. C. Studies Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Palazzo Donn'Anna at Posillipo, Naples 1819

Image 1 of 2
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Palazzo Donn'Anna at Posillipo, Naples’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 5 Recto:
Palazzo Donn’Anna at Posillipo, Naples 1819
D16092
Turner Bequest CLXXXVII 5
Pencil on white wove paper, 255 x 403 mm
Inscribed by John Ruskin in blue ink ‘5’ bottom right, descending right-hand edge
Stamped in black ‘CLXXXII 5’
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The subject of this drawing is the Palazzo Donn’Anna (also historically known as the Palace of Queen Joanna), a seventeenth-century ruin which stands on the shore at Posillipo, to the west of central Naples. Built upon the remains of an earlier villa (the Villa Sirena), the palace was constructed for the wife of the Spanish viceroy, Anna Carafa, but when her husband returned to Spain alone in 1644, the unfinished building was left abandoned and neglected. The evocative, melancholy aura of the site was further heightened by a legend associated with Queen Giovanna II of D’Anjou (Joan or Joanna II), who is said to have entertained her lovers here before throwing them into the sea to their deaths. The grand but decaying building projecting directly into the sea presented an irresistible Neapolitan subject for eighteenth- and nineteenth-century artists and there are many paintings featuring this part of the coast.1 Turner’s sketch depicts the western façade of the palace looking east along the shoreline. Visible beyond are the distinctive profiles of the Castel dell’Ovo and the Pizzafalcone hill, whilst dominating the horizon in the far distance is the mass of Vesuvius.
For a variant study of the Palazzo Donn’Anna can see another page from this sketchbook (Tate D16091; Turner Bequest CLXXXVII 4).
1
See for example Pietro Fabris (active 1754–1804), The Procession of Royal Ships at Palazzo Donn’Anna (private collection), Abraham-Louis-Rodolphe Ducros (1747–1810), Posillipo seen from Palazzo Donn’Anna, Naples (Museum of San Martino), and Francis Towne (1739–1816), The Palazzo Donn’Anna (British Museum, London), all reproduced in Giuliano Briganti, Nicola Spinosa and Lindsay Stainton, In the Shadow of Vesuvius: Views of Naples from Baroque to Romanticism 1631–1830, exhibition catalogue, Accademia Italiana delle Arti e delle Arti Applicate, London 1990, pp.79, 89, 91.
Verso:
Blank, except traces of blue watercolour; inscribed by an unknown hand in pencil ‘[?M]’ bottom right, ascending right-hand edge.

Nicola Moorby
April 2010

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘Palazzo Donn’Anna at Posillipo, Naples 1819 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, April 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-palazzo-donnanna-at-posillipo-naples-r1132351, accessed 26 December 2024.