Joseph Mallord William Turner The Portico of the Temple of Antoninus and Faustina, with the Roman Forum Beyond 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 17 Recto:
The Portico of the Temple of Antoninus and Faustina, with the Roman Forum Beyond 1819
D16188
Turner Bequest CLXXXVIII 17
Turner Bequest CLXXXVIII 17
Pencil on white wove paper, 114 x 189 mm
Stamped in black ‘CLXXXVIII 17’ bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
References
1909
A.J. Finberg, A Complete Inventory of the Drawings of the Turner Bequest, London 1909, vol.I, p.558, as ‘Portico of the Temple of Faustina, with remains of the Temple of Castor beyond’.
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Powell, ‘Turner on Classic Ground: His Visits to Central and Southern Italy and Related Paintings and Drawings’, unpublished Ph.D thesis, Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London 1984, pp.111, 116, 256 note 106.
1987
Cecilia Powell, Turner in the South: Rome, Naples, Florence, New Haven and London 1987, p.[42] note 17, 125 note 65.
Turner’s sketchbooks reveal that he thoroughly explored the various monuments of the Roman Forum from a variety of different angles. His viewpoint in this sketch is the eastern side of the portico of the Temple of Antoninus and Faustina, a Roman temple first dedicated to Faustina, the wife of Emperor Antoninus Pius in the second century AD but later converted into the Church of San Lorenzo in Miranda. During the seventeenth century, the antique remains were incorporated within a newly designed Baroque exterior. Turner’s sketch incorporates details of the ancient Corinthian capitals and the ornamental frieze of urns, griffins, candelabra and acanthus scrolls. Amongst the various figures milling about the Forum, he has also depicted a man casually leaning against one of the columns and smoking a pipe.
In the centre of the view is the ruined Temple of Castor and Pollux, an ancient building dating from the fifth century BC of which only three Corinthian columns and a surmounting section of entablature from the first century AD remain. To the left of that is the eighteenth-century Church of Santa Maria Liberatrice, an edifice which was pulled down at the beginning of the twentieth century during the excavation of the Forum. A new church with the same name was erected in the Testaccio district of the city. Turner’s sketch adopts the same viewpoint as an etching by Piranesi, Veduta laterale dell’avanzo del Tempio di Antonio e Faustina, from volume I of Le antichità Romane, first published in 1756.1
Nicola Moorby
September 2008
How to cite
Nicola Moorby, ‘The Portico of the Temple of Antoninus and Faustina, with the Roman Forum Beyond 1819 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, September 2008, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2012, https://www