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 Two Views from near Piazza di San Giovanni in Laterano, Rome; with Santi Quattro Coronati and the Colosseum; and a Distant View of the Temple of Minerva Medica 1819

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Two Views from near Piazza di San Giovanni in Laterano, Rome; with Santi Quattro Coronati and the Colosseum; and a Distant View of the Temple of Minerva Medica’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 90 Recto:
Two Views from near Piazza di San Giovanni in Laterano, Rome; with Santi Quattro Coronati and the Colosseum; and a Distant View of the Temple of Minerva Medica 1819
D16321
Turner Bequest CLXXXVIII 89
Pencil on white wove paper, 114 x 189 mm
Stamped in black ‘CLXXXVIII 89’ top left, inverted
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The subject of these two panoramic sketches represents two views seen from the same point near the Piazza di San Giovanni in Laterano. The lower prospect represents the view looking west and includes, from left to right: part of the side of the convent of Santi Quattro Coronati; the Colosseum; the bell-tower of the Church of San Clemente; the Torre dei Milizie; and the ruins of the Baths of Titus and Trajan, and the Domus Aurea (Golden House) of Nero. A similar composition can be seen in a sketch by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres (1780–1867), View of the Entrance to the Convent of SS. Quattro Coronati c.1806–20 (Musée Ingres, Montauban, France).1 The upper prospect meanwhile represents the view looking east and includes surviving sections of the Aqua Claudia (Claudian Aqueduct) and the remains of the circular Temple of Minerva Medica, near present-day Termini Station. Similar views of the latter can be see on folios 71 verso and 74 verso (D16285 and D16291; Turner Bequest CLXXXVIII 70a and 73a).

Nicola Moorby
January 2009

1
See Hans Naef, Ingres in Rome, exhibition catalogue, National Gallery of Art, Washington 1971, pp.74 and 77, no.85, reproduced.

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘Two Views from near Piazza di San Giovanni in Laterano, Rome; with Santi Quattro Coronati and the Colosseum; and a Distant View of the Temple of Minerva Medica 1819 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, January 2009, 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-two-views-from-near-piazza-di-san-giovanni-in-laterano-rome-r1139833, accessed 19 September 2024.