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 > St Peter's Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Porto di Ripa Grande, Rome 1819

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Porto di Ripa Grande, Rome’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 54 Verso:
Porto di Ripa Grande, Rome 1819
D16258
Turner Bequest CLXXXVIII 56 a
Pencil on white wove paper, 114 x 189 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The busiest and most important port in Rome was the Ripa Grande situated on the western banks of the Tiber between present-day Ponte Sublicio and Ponte Palatino. Turner’s sketch, drawn from north looking downstream shows cargo shipping docked in front of the customs house of the port. The tall slender column in the centre is a lighthouse, constructed on the orders of Pope Pius VII in about 1814–15.1 Much of the Ripa Grande port, including the lighthouse, was demolished during 1888 to make way for modern walls and embankment flood defences.2 In the distance on the right is Santa Maria del Priorato, the Church of the Knights of Malta situated on Mount Aventine on the opposite bank of the river.
Other views of the Ripa Grande can be seen in the Albano, Nemi, Rome sketchbook (Tate D15373; Turner Bequest CLXXXII 41a) and the Rome and Florence sketchbook (Tate D16492–3; Turner Bequest CXCI 5–5a).

Nicola Moorby
September 2008

1
Jeremiah Donovan, Rome, Ancient and Modern, and its Environs, Oxford 1843. vol.3, p.1019.
2
Federica D’Orazio, Rome Then and Now, London 2004, pp.122–3.

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘Porto di Ripa Grande, Rome 1819 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, September 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-porto-di-ripa-grande-rome-r1139764, accessed 16 April 2024.