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 > Pompeii, Amalfi, &c., Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner View from the Camaldoli Hill, with Procida, Ischia and the Solfatara Crater 1819

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘View from the Camaldoli Hill, with Procida, Ischia and the Solfatara Crater’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 72 Verso:
View from the Camaldoli Hill, with Procida, Ischia and the Solfatara Crater 1819
D15870
Turner Bequest CLXXXV 70 a
Pencil on white wove paper, 113 x 189 mm
Inscribed by the artist in pencil ‘Ischia Baia’ top centre, ‘[?smoke]’ and ‘Solfattera’ within sketch of crater, ‘smoke’ centre right-hand edge, and ‘Piano’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Turner often sought out high vantage points from which to gain a panoramic perspective across cities and landscapes. The highest point in Naples was the hill of Camaldoli to the north-west, from where it was possible to survey the length of the Gulf of Naples and the Tyrrhenian coastline from Gaeta in the west to Vesuvius and Sorrento in the east. It was a popular destination for tourists and similarly for topographical artists. Turner’s contemporary, James Hakewill (1778–1843), for example made a detailed drawing of the vista inscribed with the names of the principal landmarks.1 The hill was also the site of the Eremo di Camaldoli, a sixteenth-century monastery of the Camaldolese order.
The sketch on this page forms part of a sweeping view looking south and west from Camaldoli across the Campi Flegrei (Phlegraean or Burning Fields), the volcanic area to the west of Naples bordered by the Gulf of Pozzuoli. The composition continues on the opposite sheet of the double-page spread, see folio 73 (D15871; Turner Bequest CLXXXV 71), but the features visible on this side include the town and plain of Pianura (labelled by the artist ‘piano’), the smoking, sulphurous Solfatara crater, and along the horizon the islands of Procida, Ischia and the Capo Miseno.
For further views from Camaldoli see folios 42 verso, 72, 73 verso–78 verso (D15816, D15869, D15872–D15882; Turner Bequest CLXXXV 42a, 70, 71a–76a).

Nicola Moorby
October 2010

1
View from the great Camaldoli above the city of Naples 1816 (British School at Rome Library), reproduced in Tony Cubberley and Luke Herrmann, Twilight of the Grand Tour: A catalogue of the drawings by James Hakewill in the British School at Rome Library, Rome 1992, no.5.42, reproduced p.270.

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘View from the Camaldoli Hill, with Procida, Ischia and the Solfatara Crater 1819 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, October 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-view-from-the-camaldoli-hill-with-procida-ischia-and-the-r1138341, accessed 19 September 2024.