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 > Ancona to Rome Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Nepi from the North, with the Rocca dei Borgia and the Aqueduct 1819

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Nepi from the North, with the Rocca dei Borgia and the Aqueduct’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 83 Recto:
Nepi from the North, with the Rocca dei Borgia and the Aqueduct 1819
D14815
Turner Bequest CLXXVII 83
Pencil on white wove paper, 110 x 186 mm
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘83’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CLXXVII 83’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
After Civita Castellana, Turner’s route to Rome left the Via Flaminia and led him south-west to Nepi, a town approximately twenty-three miles north of the Eternal City. This sketch shows a view of the skyline of Nepi from the Castel Sant’Elia road to the north. On the left are the towers of the fifteenth-century castle, the Rocca dei Borgia, and on the right is the eighteenth-century aqueduct with its double row of arches. The panorama continues on the opposite sheet of the double-page spread, see folio 82 verso (D14814), with the campanile of the Palazzo Comunale; the dome and cupola of the Church of San Pietro; and the spire of the cathedral (rebuilt in 1831).
Other studies related to Nepi can be found on folios 76 verso (D14802) and 80 verso–83 verso (D14810–6). See also Turner’s 1828 sketches in the Viterbo and Ronciglione Sketchbook (Tate D21788–D21808; Turner Bequest CXXXVI 12a–22a).

Nicola Moorby
November 2008

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘Nepi from the North, with the Rocca dei Borgia and the Aqueduct 1819 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, November 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-nepi-from-the-north-with-the-rocca-dei-borgia-and-the-r1138978, accessed 24 April 2024.