J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours

This page contains two distinct landscape sketches. The upper vista represents a view of Loreto, a town on the Adriatic coast, approximately fourteen miles south-east of Ancona which Turner passed through en route to Rome in 1819. The drawing depicts the approach from the north with the dome and campanile of the Santuario della Santa Casa (Church of the Holy House) silhouetted against the horizon. Related views can be found in the Ancona to Rome sketchbook (see Tate D14671; Turner Bequest CLXXVII 10) and the prospect is also similar to the background of Turner’s finished oil painting, The Loretto Necklace (Tate, N00509).1

The details of the lower study are less clearly defined but they appear to depict mountainous scenery. The drawing spills over onto the opposite sheet of the double-page spread, see folio 35 verso (D13926), where an inscription suggests that this is a distant view of Jesi, a town to the west of Ancona, with the Apennines in the background. See also folio 31 verso (D13918).