J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours

Turner’s choice of viewpoint for this pencil study was a spot near to the Porta San Pancrazio on the Janiculum Hill, looking east towards the centre of the city. There are three key structures dominating the foreground: on the right is the Church of San Pietro in Montorio; in the centre is the back of the Fontana dell’Acqua Paola (Pauline Fountain); and the building on the far left is the Villa Aurelia, a seventeenth-century residence built for Cardinal Girolamo Farnese (also known as the Casino del Giardino Farnese sul Monte Gianicolo, now part of the American Academy in Rome).1 During the French invasion of Rome in the mid-nineteenth century the house was used as the headquarters of General Garibaldi and suffered considerable damage from bombardment. Although the façade of the villa was restored, the roof was rebuilt in a different style to that depicted by Turner. It can be seen, however, in an eighteenth-century topographical print by Giuseppe Vasi,2 and in the background of an engraving of the Fontana dell’Acqua Paola by Giovanni Battista Piranesi.3 A related and similar coloured view can be found on the recto of this sheet (D16353; Turner Bequest CLXXXIX 27). Unlike Turner’s other drawings of views from the Janiculum Hill, there does not appear to be an artistic precedent for this rather unusual choice of composition.

For other sketches of the Janiculum Hill see the entry for D16353.