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

Turner arrived in Turin from Milan in mid-January 1829, before journeying westwards towards the Franco-Italian Alps. This is one of thirteen views of the city dispersed throughout the sketchbook: see under folio 7 recto (D21676) for a list of relevant works.

As identified in Finberg’s 1909 Inventory of the Bequest, and later by the geographer and Turner researcher Roland Courtot, the subject of this study is the Piazza Castello, a historic square in central Turin.1 From the southern end of the square, Turner looked north towards the octagonal drum and lantern of the Church of San Lorenzo to the left, and the freestanding belltower of the Cathedral of San Giovanni Battista at the centre. Turner’s faint upper inscription likely reads ‘Duomo’. To the right of the composition is the southern façade of the Palazzo Reale, including the Capella della Sacra Sindone (Chapel of the Holy Shroud) beyond.

This panoramic study closely resembles an earlier view of Turin executed by Turner in 1819, during the outward leg of his first Italian tour: see Nicola Moorby’s entry for the Turin, Como, Lugarno, Maggiore sketchbook in the present catalogue (Tate D14201; Turner Bequest CLXXIV 28 a); for alternative views of Turin from 1819, see D14166 (CLXXIV 11).

As Moorby noted regarding Turner’s 1819 study, the artist’s elevated viewpoint was likely achieved from the higher storey of a building bordering the Piazzo Castello, rather than from ground level; Finberg proposed the Via Roma. The present study is captured from a position slightly further to the east, perhaps even from the Villa Madama.