'A Villa (Villa Madama - Moonlight), for Rogers's 'Italy'', Joseph Mallord William Turner

Artwork details

Artist

Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775‑1851)

Title

A Villa (Villa Madama - Moonlight), for Rogers's 'Italy'

From Rogers's Italy 1830 Watercolours

Date c.1826-7

MediumGraphite, pen and ink and watercolour on paper

Dimensionssupport: 241 x 297 mm

Collection

Tate

Acquisition Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856

Reference

D27676

Turner Bequest CCLXXX 159

View this artwork by appointment, at Tate Britain's Prints and Drawings Rooms

Catalogue entry

Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851

A Villa (Villa Madama – Moonlight), for Rogers’s ‘Italy’ circa 1826–7

D27676
Turner Bequest CCLXXX 159

Pencil, pen and ink, and watercolour, approximately 130 x 132 mm on white wove paper, 240 x 297 mm
Stamped in black ‘CCLXXX 159’ bottom right

Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856

Exhibition history

References

1903

E.T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn (eds.), Library Edition: The Works of John Ruskin: Volume I: Early Prose Writings 1834–1843, London 1903, pp.233, 244.

1904

E.T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn (eds.), Library Edition: The Works of John Ruskin: Volume XIII: Turner: The Harbours of England; Catalogues and Notes, London 1904, pp.380–1.

1906

E.T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn (eds.), Library Edition: The Works of John Ruskin: Volume XXI: The Ruskin Art Collection at Oxford, London 1906, p.214.

1909

A.J. Finberg, A Complete Inventory of the Drawings in the Turner Bequest, London 1909, vol.II, p.901, as ‘Verona: Moonlight’.

1966

Adele Holcomb, ‘J.M.W. Turner’s Illustrations to the Poets’, unpublished Ph.D thesis, University of California, Los Angeles 1966, pp.41, 69–71, 100, reproduced fig.32.

1974

Martin Butlin, Andrew Wilton and John Gage, Turner 1775–1851, exhibition catalogue, Royal Academy, London 1974, no.277.

1979

Andrew Wilton, The Life and Work of J.M.W. Turner, Fribourg 1979, p.438 no.1165, reproduced.

1983

Cecilia Powell, ‘Turner’s vignettes and the making of Rogers’s “Italy” ’, Turner Studies, vol.3, no.1, Summer 1983, p.13 note 77.

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Powell, ‘Turner on Classic Ground: His Visits to Central and Southern Italy and Related Paintings and Drawings’, unpublished Ph.D thesis, Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London 1984, p.250 note 80.

1988

Ian Warrell and Diane Perkins, Turner & Architecture, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1988, p.18 no.40.

1993

Susan Phelps Gordon, Anthony Lacy Gully, Robert Hewison and others, John Ruskin and the Victorian Eye, exhibition catalogue, Phoenix Art Museum 1993, no.59, pp.82–3.

1990

Ian Warrell, ‘Appendix to the Paintings in the Catalogue’, Italy by Moonlight. The Night in Italian Painting 1550–1850, exhibition catalogue, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, London Accademia Italiana Delle Arte e Delle Arti Applicate, London and Rome 1990, [p.5], [p.6] reproduced.

1993

Jan Piggott, Turner’s Vignettes, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1993, no.4, pp.37, 81 reproduced, 97.

1998

Cecilia Powell, Italy in the Age of Turner: ‘The Garden of the World’, exhibition catalogue, Dulwich Picture Gallery, London 1998, no.47, reproduced in colour, p.81.

2002

David Blayney Brown, Turner in the Tate Collection, London 2002, p.123, p.122 reproduced (colour).

2008

James Hamilton, Nicola Moorby, Christopher Baker and others, Turner e l’Italia, exhibition catalogue, Palazzo dei Diamanti, Ferrara 2008, no.56, pp.57, [195], 200, reproduced in colour, as ‘Una villa (Villa Madama al chiaro di luna)’.

2009

James Hamilton, Nicola Moorby, Christopher Baker and others, Turner & Italy, exhibition catalogue, National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh 2009, p.60, reproduced in colour, p.[61], pl.65.

This vignette was engraved by Henry le Keux and appears as the end-piece for the twenty-seventh section of Rogers’s Italy, entitled ‘An interview.’1 It is arguably the most dramatic of the moonlit scenes that Turner produced for Rogers’s Italy, the other two being Galileo’s Villa and Villa on the Night of the Festa di Ballo (see Tate D27680; Turner Bequest CCLXXX 163 and Tate D27682; Turner Bequest CCLXXX 165).

Villa Madama is one of the most famous and widely imitated villas and terraced gardens of the High Renaissance. It was designed by Raphael who intended it to rival the villas of antiquity. The villa, on the Janiculum Hill in Rome, included a courtyard with a monumental flight of steps (seen here in the foreground) and an open air amphitheatre, which the poet describes at some length. Rogers’s final verses are nicely complemented by the dark and poetic exterior view shown here:

The rising moon we hailed,
Duly, devoutly, from a vestibule
Of many an arch, o’er-wrought and lavishly
With many a labyrinth of sylphs and flowers,
When Raphael and his school from Florence came,
Filling the land with splendour – nor less oft
Watched her, declining, from a silent dell,
Not silent once, what time in rivalry
Tasso, Guarini, waved their wizard-wands,
Peopling the groves from Arcady, and lo,
Fair forms appeared, murmuring melodious verse,
– Then, in their day, a sylvan theatre,
Mossy the seats, the stage a verdurous floor,
The scenery rock and shrub-wood, Nature’s own;
Nature the Architect.
(Italy, pp.134–5)

In addition to the Villa Madama, Turner’s vignette also shows the Villa Mellini, which appears in the upper right of the composition. The structures have been drawn according to two different perspective systems and are lit by opposing light sources: whereas Villa Madama appears to be illuminated from within, the exterior of Villa Mellini is brightly lit by the moon. Both of these ambiguities contribute to the overall sense of other-worldly mystery that dominates the scene.

The drawings of the Villa Madama that Turner made during his 1819 visit to Italy show the building from a different vantage point and bear little formal relation to the vignette (see for example, Tate D16182; Turner Bequest CLXXXVIII 13a). The building was in a state of decline by the time Rogers and Turner visited it, though this fact is far from clear in the vignette.2 Instead, Turner here seems to show the building restored to its former glory. Given the fluid movement between past and present that occurs throughout Rogers’s text, as well as in Turner’s vignettes, this imaginative recreation of the building as it might have once looked is neither surprising nor out of place. Turner appears to do the same in Paestum, in which he depicts the central temple restored to its original state (see Tate D27665; Turner Bequest CCLXXX 148).3

Although the building shown here is now generally agreed to have been modelled after the Villa Madama, there has been some question in the past regarding its identity. When it appeared as part of the portfolio of Italy engravings published by Cadell and Moxon in 1838, this design was simply titled ‘A Villa’ and Finberg would later incorrectly identify the subject as ‘Verona: Moonlight.’4 Jan Piggott has pointed out that the arcaded structure in the middle distance reappears in another contemporary work, Claudian Harbour Scene, 1828 (Tate, N03382),5 which Turner produced as a study for Dido Directing the Equipment of the Fleet,1828 (Tate, N00506).6

Samuel Rogers, Italy, London 1830, p.135; W.G. Rawlinson, The Engraved Work of J.M.W. Turner, R.A., vol.II, London 1913, no.361. There is one impression in Tate’s collection (T04651).

Piggott 1993, p.81.

Powell 1983, p.8.

Finberg 1909, vol.II, p.90.

Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll, The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner, revised ed., New Haven and London 1984, no.313

Butlin and Joll 1984, no.241; Piggott 1993, p.81.

Technical notes:
Watermark ‘NotBleac’ [‘NotBleached’]

Verso:

Inscribed by unknown hands in pencil ‘NG’ (underlined) along top and ’10 | b’ centre and ‘CCLXXX.159’ bottom centre. There are also two perpendicular pencil lines forming a corner at the centre of the sheet.
Stamped in black ‘CCLXXX 159’ centre

Meredith Gamer
August 2006

Read this catalogue entry in full

This catalogue entry is part of: David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, December 2012.