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 The Ponte della Sanità, Naples, from above the Basilica of Santa Maria della Sanità 1819

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Ponte della Sanità, Naples, from above the Basilica of Santa Maria della Sanità’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 24 Recto:
The Ponte della Sanità, Naples, from above the Basilica of Santa Maria della Sanità 1819
D16112
Turner Bequest CLXXXVII 24
Pencil on white wove paper, 255 x 403 mm
Inscribed by John Ruskin in blue ink ‘24’ bottom right, descending right-hand edge
Stamped in black ‘CLXXXVII 24’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The Ponte della Sanità is a viaduct in Naples, built during the early nineteenth century to carry the new road, Nuova Strada di Capodimonte or Corso Napoleone (present-day Corso Amedeo di Savoia), north from Via Toledo to Capodimonte. This highly unusual composition depicts the bridge from the north with the heights of Castel Sant’Elmo dominating the distance beyond.1 Turner’s viewpoint appears to be from the upper stories of a building flanking the Basilica of Santa Maria della Sanità (also known as the Chiesa di San Vincenzo). This seventeenth-century church is built on a Greek cross design with a central dome and twelve smaller lateral domes in four groups of three. Visible in the bottom left-hand foreground are three of the lateral domes from the north-west corner. An alternative view of the church from the bridge can be found in the Gandolfo to Naples sketchbook (Tate D15689; Turner Bequest CLXXXIV 65a).
1
A view from the bridge looking in the opposite direction towards Capodimonte and the church, Ponte della Sanita sulla Strada nuova di Capodimonte’, can be found in Pinelli Bartolomeo Pinelli, Nuova Raccolta di Ventiquatrro Vedute de’Contorni di Napoli, Rome 1823.
Verso:
Blank, save for inscription by an unknown hand in pencil ‘[?M]’ bottom right, ascending right-hand edge.

Nicola Moorby
November 2010

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘The Ponte della Sanità, Naples, from above the Basilica of Santa Maria della Sanità 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-the-ponte-della-sanita-naples-from-above-the-basilica-of-r1132372, accessed 19 April 2024.