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 San Pietro in Montorio on the Janiculum Hill, Rome 1819

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘San Pietro in Montorio on the Janiculum Hill, Rome’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 79 Verso:
San Pietro in Montorio on the Janiculum Hill, Rome 1819
D15447
Turner Bequest CLXXXII 78 a
Pencil on white wove paper, 113 x 189 mm
Inscribed by the artist in pencil ‘Tombs’ centre of right-hand edge
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The subject of this sketch is the outer walls of the church and convent of San Pietro in Montorio on the lower slopes of the Janiculum Hill in Rome.1 Turner’s view looks south with the hill falling away to the left, towards the River Tiber and distant mountains. A similar view from a greater distance away can be found in the St Peter’s sketchbook (see Tate D16161; Turner Bequest CLXXXVIII 3). For further sketches from the Janiculum see folio 39 verso-40 (D15369–D15370).
In the top left-hand corner of the page Turner has drawn a study of an architectural feature incorporating ornamental scrolls.

Nicola Moorby
May 2008

1
Compare a detail from Giuseppe Vasi’s panorama of Rome published in 1765, see the endpapers of Raymond Keaveney, Views of Rome from the Thomas Ashby Collection in the Vatican Library, exhibition catalogue, Smithsonian Institution, Washington 1988; also http://www.romeartlover.it/Ad11.htm, accessed April 2009.

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘San Pietro in Montorio on the Janiculum Hill, Rome 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-san-pietro-in-montorio-on-the-janiculum-hill-rome-r1132742, accessed 23 April 2024.