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 > Venice to Ancona Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Ancona from East of the Cathedral 1819

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Ancona from East of the Cathedral’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 81 Recto:
Ancona from East of the Cathedral 1819
D14637
Turner Bequest CLXXVI 77
Pencil on white wove paper, 111 x 184 mm
Partial watermark ‘Allnutt | 18’
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘77’ bottom right (now faint)
Stamped in black ‘CLXXVI – 77’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The drawing continues across folio 80 verso opposite (D14636; Turner Bequest CLXXVI 76a), looking east. The Turner scholar C.F. Bell annotated Finberg’s 1909 Inventory entry (‘Ancona’): ‘Panorama from a spot just East of the apse of the Cathedral’.1 The apse of the south-eastern transept of the Cathedral of San Ciriaco and its separate campanile are seen on the right; beyond, the view is to the south with the Cittadella (now heavily wooded) on the skyline, aligned with the dome of the church of Santi Pellegrino e Teresa over the brow of the headland. Today the view is somewhat obscured by modern buildings and trees in the cathedral’s car park.
For Cecilia Powell and James Hamilton’s comments on Turner’s varied and extensive coverage of Ancona, which takes up most of the last quarter or so of this sketchbook, see under folio 69 verso (D14514; Turner Bequest CLXXVI 65a).2

Matthew Imms
March 2017

1
Undated MS note by C.F. Bell (died 1966) in copy of Finberg 1909, Tate Britain Prints and Drawings Room, I, p.519.
2
See Powell 1984, pp.92–3, 466 note 109, Powell 1987, pp.25, 202 note 45, and Hamilton 1997, pp.198, 325 note 13.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Ancona from East of the Cathedral 1819 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, March 2017, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, July 2017, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-ancona-from-east-of-the-cathedral-r1186373, accessed 19 April 2024.