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 > Albano, Nemi, Rome Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner The Palazzo Sforza Cesarini, Genzano 1819

Image 1 of 2
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Palazzo Sforza Cesarini, Genzano’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 20 Verso:
The Palazzo Sforza Cesarini, Genzano 1819
D15332
Turner Bequest CLXXXII 20 a
Pencil on white wove paper, 113 x 189 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
After sketching around Lake Albano, Turner moved south-east across to Lake Nemi. This partial study of a grand building on the shores above the lake depicts the seventeenth-century Palazzo Sforza Cesarini in Genzano. The artist has incorporated just enough detail to record the main entrance in the centre of the façade and the differing architectural elements of the three storeys. The prospect is similar to that adopted by the Welsh landscape artist, Richard Wilson (1714–1782) in a drawing, The Terrace of the Capuchin Convent at Genzano (whereabouts unknown) and a related oil painting, Lake Nemi from a Convent Garden (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York).1 For related studies and a general discussion of Turner’s view of Lake Nemi see folio 19 (D15329).
In the top right-hand corner is a group of trees and buildings which belongs to the sketch on the opposite page, see folio 20 verso (D15333).

Nicola Moorby
May 2008

1
Reproduced in Denys Sutton (ed.), An Italian Sketchbook by Richard Wilson RA, vol.II, London 1968, p.28. See also sketch on folio 6 of sketchbook, reproduced vol.1, [p.23].

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘The Palazzo Sforza Cesarini, Genzano 1819 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, May 2008, 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-palazzo-sforza-cesarini-genzano-r1132627, accessed 20 September 2024.