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 > Naples, Paestum and Rome Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Three Views of Salerno, Including the Church of Santissima Annunziata 1819

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Three Views of Salerno, Including the Church of Santissima Annunziata’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 39 Verso:
Three Views of Salerno, Including the Church of Santissima Annunziata 1819
D15985
Turner Bequest CLXXXVI 37 a
Pencil on white wove paper, 189 x 113 mm
Inscribed by the artist in pencil ‘Blue to Red’ right-hand side of bottom sketch
Inscribed by ?John Ruskin in red ink ‘1286 bottom right, ascending right-hand edge
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The city of Salerno lies within the Gulf of Salerno, approximately thirty miles south-east of Naples. Turner passed through en route to the Greek temples at Paestum and made a number of sketches of the harbour and the surrounding bay. The two uppermost drawings on this page represent views looking east from the waterfront with the fourteenth-century church and Baroque bell-tower of the Chiesa della Santissima Annunziata. On the summit of the hill to the left is the eighth-century Castello di Arechi (Arechi Castle), and Turner has also drawn a separate thumbnail study of the fortress in the top left-hand corner. The vista at the bottom of the sheet meanwhile represents a view looking in the opposite direction along the coastline west of the city. The tower at the water’s edge is the Torre Crestarella between Salerno and Vietri sul Mare, one of a number of medieval watch-towers peppered all along the Amalfi coast.
For further sketches of Salerno see folios 38 and 39 (D15982 and D15984; Turner Bequest CLXXXVI 36 and 37) and the Pompeii, Amalfi, Sorrento, Herculaneum sketchbook (Tate D15824; Turner Bequest CLXXXV 47a).

Nicola Moorby
July 2010

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘Three Views of Salerno, Including the Church of Santissima Annunziata 1819 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, July 2010, 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-three-views-of-salerno-including-the-church-of-santissima-r1137909, accessed 20 September 2024.