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

Here Turner records two of Trier’s most celebrated monuments: at right Constantine’s Imperial bath house, and at left, the interior of the majestic Romanesque and Gothic cathedral. Turner pictures the crumbling ivy-clad remains of what was most likely the caldarium of the Imperial Baths, where the Emperor and his subjects could steam and bathe in hot plunge pools (see also Tate D19739, D28247; Turner Bequest CCXVI 95a, CCLXXXVIII 44). To the left, squared-off by a rough line, is what appears to be the inside of St Peter’s Cathedral with worshippers gathered at the base of one of the nave’s vertiginous piers (see also Tate D19743; Turner Bequest CCXVI 97a).