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 Posillipo and Mergellina from the Vomero Hill, Naples 1819

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Posillipo and Mergellina from the Vomero Hill, Naples’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 11 Verso:
Posillipo and Mergellina from the Vomero Hill, Naples 1819
D16099
Turner Bequest CLXXXVII 11a
Pencil on white wove paper, 255 x 403 mm
Stamped in black ‘CLXXXVII 11a’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The subject of this drawing is a view of the Posillipo Hill above the small harbour of Mergellina to the west of Naples.1 Turner’s viewpoint appears to be looking south-west from a road curving along the lower slopes of the Vomero hill. The zigzag pathway ascending the terraced slopes near the centre of the composition is probably the Salita di Sant’Antonio (present-day Rampe Sant’Antonio), a road which leads from Piedigrotta at the foot of the Posillipo Hill to the Church of Sant’Antonio.

Nicola Moorby
November 2010

1
Compare a painting by Alexandre-Hyacine Dunouy (1757–1841), La spiaggia di Mergellina e la collina di Posillipo (private collection), reproduced in colour in Anna Ottani Cavina, Un Paese Incantato: Italia Dipinta da Thomas Jones a Corot, exhibition catalogue, Galeries nationales du Grand Palais, Parigi and Palazzo Te, Mantova, Italy 2001, no.89, p.137.

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘Posillipo and Mergellina from the Vomero Hill, Naples 1819 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, November 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-posillipo-and-mergellina-from-the-vomero-hill-naples-r1132358, accessed 19 April 2024.