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 > Small Roman Colour Studies Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Interior of Santa Costanza, Rome 1819

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Interior of Santa Costanza, Rome’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 62 Recto:
Interior of Santa Costanza, Rome 1819
D16431
Turner Bequest CXC 25
Pencil and grey watercolour on white wove paper, 130 x 255 mm
Inscribed by the artist in pencil ‘24’ bottom of sketch’
Inscribed by ?John Ruskin in red ink ‘25’ top right and by an unknown hand in pencil ‘25’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CXC 25’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
As Cecilia Powell first correctly identified, this sketch depicts an interior view of Santa Costanza, an early Christian fourth-century church which stands near Sant’Agnese fuori le mura on the Via Nomentana, north-east of the historic centre of Rome. The church was originally designed as a mausoleum for Constantina, daughter of the Emperor Constantine, who was later canonised as Santa Costanza. Turner’s sketch shows the view looking towards the sarcophagus (a replica of the original which was moved to the Vatican Museums in 1790) which sits in the centre of a circular arcade of twelve pairs of granite columns (hence Turner’s note ‘24’).1 The diagrammatic detail at the bottom centre of the page is probably a rough plan of the arrangement of these columns. In the bottom left-hand corner is a small study of a sculptural ornamental, possibly from one of the capitals. Turner may have known Piranesi’s print of the interior of Santa Costanza from the Vedute di Roma 1756.2
For sketches of the exterior of the church see folios 35, 61 verso and 62 verso (D16454, D16430 and D16432; Turner Bequest CXC 40, 24a and 25a).

Nicola Moorby
June 2009

1
Touring club italiano, Roma e Dintorni, 6th edition, Milan 1977, p.319. See photograph in Touring Club Italiano, Attraverso l’Italia Nuova Serie: Rome Parte Seconda, Milan 1960, fig.56, p.39.
2
Luigi Ficacci, Piranesi: The Complete Etchings, Köln and London 2000, no.896, reproduced p.699.

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘Interior of Santa Costanza, Rome 1819 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, June 2009, 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-interior-of-santa-costanza-rome-r1132576, accessed 25 April 2024.