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

The subject of this coloured study, the so-called Temple of Minerva Medica, was described by Charlotte Eaton in her travel guide to Rome, a series of letters written in 1817–8 and published in 1820:

The Temple was one of Rome’s most frequently visited monuments, yet the building itself is something of a mystery. Popularly deriving its name from a statue found on site depicting the goddess Minerva with a snake (representative of the medical symbol of the caduceus) the circular structure has also been variously described as a nymphaeum or bath house and a dining pavilion.2 In the nineteenth century the area was a wasteland of Roman ruins and the Temple lay within a modern vineyard which Eustace recorded also contained ‘various subterranean vaulted apartments, some more, some less ornamented, the receptacles of the dead of various families.’3 Today, the circular ruin stands between the railway tracks leading into Termini station and the present-day via Giovanni Giolotti, very close to the Porta Maggiore (also known as the Porta Praenestina).

In 1823, Marianne Colston wrote that the combination of the Temple’s ruined architecture with wild plants growing over it ‘presents the most picturesque and lovely object to the painter’.4 In fact, by the nineteenth century it had become a popular motif for artists, the people according to James Whiteside who had ‘succeeded the warriors and emperors who once dwelt in the eternal city.’5 Turner was familiar with the appearance of the monument through the work of others such as Giovanni Battista Piranesi,6 Richard Wilson,7 and James Hakewill.8 He had also depicted it prior to seeing it for himself, as the subject in one of the plates of the Liber Studiorum, The Temple of Minerva Medica (‘Hindoo Devotions’ or ‘The Hindoo Worshipper’) circa 1808 (see Tate D08128; Turner Bequest CXVII A), engraved by Robert Dunkarton, 1811 (see Tate A00957). During his 1819 visit to Rome he made numerous studies of the structure from a variety of angles, see the Albano, Nemi, Rome sketchbook (Tate D15401; Turner Bequest CLXXXII 55), the St Peter’s sketchbook (Tate D16318; Turner Bequest CLXXXVIII 87a), and the Small Roman Colour Studies sketchbook (Tate D16436–D16438; Turner Bequest CXC 27a–29). His sketches shows that at this time the building still had the partial remains of a vaulted roof. This, however, collapsed in 1828.

This study depicts a distant view of the Temple of Minerva Medica from the east, at a point near the Church of San Lorenzo fuori le mura. To the right can be seen the towers of the Porta San Lorenzo (also known as the Porta Tiburtina), and on the left is the bell-tower of the Church of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme. Stretching across the horizontal breadth of the composition is the Aurelian Wall. As noted by Thomas Ashby, however, Turner has misinterpreted the arches to the left of the Temple as an aqueduct, when in fact they are part of an internal gallery in the upper section of the Walls.9 The design is particularly close to studies in the Albano, Nemi, Rome sketchbook (Tate D15432–D15434; Turner Bequest CLXXXII 70a-71a) and the Small Roman C. Studies sketchbook (Tate D16436 and D16438; Turner Bequest CXC 27a and 29). Another watercolour featuring the Temple from a distance can also be found within this sketchbook (see D16362; Turner Bequest CLXXXIX 35). Like many drawings within the Rome C. Studies sketchbook, the composition has been executed over a washed grey background. There is no evidence of preliminary drawing in pencil and the scene seems to have been entirely developed in watercolour and gouache. Turner’s use of colour is naturalistic and local, and his handling of the paint is largely loose and free. John Ruskin suggested that it was ‘just possible’ that Turner executed the study en plein air because the colouring was so ‘hasty’.10 However, as Cecilia Powell has discussed it is more likely that the watercolour was completed indoors from memory (for further discussion, see the introduction to the sketchbook).11 The delicate pink and yellow blush of the sunset sky in the west and the dark, dramatic sweeping clouds on the right provide an evocative backdrop to the sight of the crumbling ruin, overgrown with weeds and moss. A solitary figure in the central foreground further enhances the sense of melancholy, a familiar mood for the Romantic tourist reflecting on the transience and decline which Rome so poignantly represented.12

Verso:

Blank, except for traces of watercolour; inscribed by an unknown hand in pencil ‘9’ centre right, parallel with right-hand edge, and stamped in black ‘CLXXXIX 36’ bottom right.