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 Two Views in Genzano, Including the Fountain of San Sebastiano and the Church of Santissima Trinità 1819

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Two Views in Genzano, Including the Fountain of San Sebastiano and the Church of Santissima Trinità’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 88 Verso:
Two Views in Genzano, Including the Fountain of San Sebastiano and the Church of Santissima Trinità 1819
D15464
Turner Bequest CLXXXII 87 a
Pencil on white wove paper, 113 x 189 mm
Inscribed by the artist in pencil ‘Cor’ top right and ‘Wood cut’ and ‘C.... | [?Holy] | the c[...] Light’ underneath sketch bottom left, inverted
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Cecilia Powell has identified the main inverted sketch on this page as the fountain and the crossroads at Genzano.1 Now located in the present-day Plaza IV Novembre, the fountain of San Sebastiano was moved in 1836 from the crossroads between the roads to Rome and Naples. Designed by Virginio Bracci, the son of Pietro Bracci who designed the Trevi Fountain in Rome, the fountain has three gargoyle heads from where the water spouts and is surmounted by a column decorated with bunches of grapes. The original triangular base which Turner would have seen, however, is now hexagonal and decorated with heraldic papal shields.
In one corner of the page Turner has also drawn a separate sketch of the collegiate Church of Santissima Trinità. On the far right is a sketch of a man wearing a hat, which belongs to the scene on the opposite sheet, see folio 89 (D15465; Turner Bequest CLXXXII 88).

Nicola Moorby
May 2008

1
Powell 1984, p.423.

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘Two Views in Genzano, Including the Fountain of San Sebastiano and the Church of Santissima Trinità 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-two-views-in-genzano-including-the-fountain-of-san-r1132759, accessed 25 April 2024.