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 Vietri sul Mare Seen from Molina; and the Ponte del Diavolo, Molina 1819

Image 1 of 2
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Vietri sul Mare Seen from Molina; and the Ponte del Diavolo, Molina’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 43 Recto:
Vietri sul Mare Seen from Molina; and the Ponte del Diavolo, Molina 1819
D15992
Turner Bequest CLXXXVI 41
Pencil on white wove paper, 113 x 189 mm
Inscribed by ?John Ruskin in red ink ‘41’ top right and ‘245’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CLXXXVI 41’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The nineteenth-century road between Naples and Salerno entered the Lattari mountains at Nocera and emerged on the Amalfi coast at Vietri sul Mare. Turner’s viewpoint for the main sketch on this page appears to be this road going south as it skirts the lower eastern flank of the Valle Bonea at Molina (present day Via Roma / Enrico de Marinis). In the middle distance on the left is the dome and bell-tower of the seventeenth-century Church of San Giovanni Battista in Vietri sul Mare, with the sea and the Tyrrhenian coastline beyond. For related vistas see folio 43 verso (D15993; Turner Bequest CLXXXVI 41a) and the Pompeii, Amalfi, Sorrento, Herculaneum sketchbook (Tate D15752 and D15798–D15799; Turner Bequest CLXXXV 8a and 32a–33).1
The smaller study in the top right-hand corner depicts the view looking down the valley in the opposite direction towards the Ponte del Diavolo, an aqueduct at Molina which was destroyed in a flood in 1954, see folio 42 verso (D15991; Turner Bequest CLXXXVI 40a).

Nicola Moorby
July 2010

1
Compare also a print after James Duffield Harding (1798–1863), View of Vietri 1832 (British Museum), reproduced at http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/search_the_collection_database/search_object_image.aspx?objectId=3040093&partId=1&searchText=vietri&fromADBC=ad&toADBC=ad&orig=%2fresearch%2fsearch_the_collection_database.aspx&numPages=10&currentPage=1&asset_id=548901, accessed July 2010.

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘Vietri sul Mare Seen from Molina; and the Ponte del Diavolo, Molina 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-vietri-sul-mare-seen-from-molina-and-the-ponte-del-diavolo-r1137916, accessed 26 April 2024.