'Two Sketches in Rome; The Pyramid of Cestius with the Porta San Paolo and the Aurelian Walls; and a Distant View of St Peter's', Joseph Mallord William Turner

Artwork details

Artist

Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775‑1851)

Title

Two Sketches in Rome; The Pyramid of Cestius with the Porta San Paolo and the Aurelian Walls; and a Distant View of St Peter's

From Albano, Nemi, Rome Sketchbook

Turner Bequest CLXXXII

Date 1819

MediumGraphite on paper

Dimensionssupport: 113 x 189 mm

Collection

Tate

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

Reference

D15375

Turner Bequest CLXXXII 42 a

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

Turner's sketchbooks

View this artwork in the Albano, Nemi, Rome Sketchbook

Catalogue entry

Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851

Folio 42 Verso:

Two Sketches in Rome; The Pyramid of Cestius with the Porta San Paolo and the Aurelian Walls; and a Distant View of St Peter’s 1819

D15375
Turner Bequest CLXXXII 42 a

Pencil on white wove paper, 113 x 189 mm

Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856

References

The subject of this drawing is the Porta San Paulo (formerly called the Porta Ostiense), and the adjacent Pyramid of Cestius, a funerary monument of white marble built between 18–12 BC for the magistrate Gaius Cestius Epulo and later incorporated into the Aurelian Walls.1 Turner has depicted the tomb from the east and has included the outline of the walls with their square towers at regular intervals stretching towards the right. Part of the composition has been sketched over the top of an underlying drawing of St Peter’s, the continuation of the view on the opposite page, see folio 43 (D15376).

Further sketches of the Pyramid of Cestius can be found on folios 42 (D15374) and 45 verso (D15381). See also the Rome and Florence sketchbook (Tate D16500; Turner Bequest CXCI 9).

Nicola Moorby
May 2008

Raymond Keaveney, Views of Rome from the Thomas Ashby Collection in the Vatican Library, exhibition catalogue, Smithsonian Institution, Washington 1988, p.208.

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.