Joseph Mallord William Turner

Turner devoted a considerable number of sketches to the Roman Bridge of Augustus (Ponte d’Augusto) at Narni, one of the most famous landmarks in Umbria, see folio 61 verso (D14772). This view, depicting the single surviving arch and the remains of the other supporting piers, was drawn from the centre of the adjacent medieval bridge looking west along the gorge of the River Nera. Framed within the arch is the distant hillside monastery of San Cassiano. In the left-hand foreground two tiny stooping figures provide a sense of the grand scale of the remains. The drawing is continued on folio 63 (D14775), where the artist has folded back the page in order to complete the sketch on the sheet below.

Whether deliberately or subconsciously, Turner has replicated the same composition as that of his watercolour illustration, The Bridge at Narni (whereabouts unknown),1 based upon a drawing by James Hakewill for the latter’s Picturesque Tour of Italy, published 1819 (see Tate T05079 and T06014).2 The accompanying text described the picturesque properties of the vista:

In fact, the view was an established motif for eighteenth- and nineteenth-century topographical artists, see for example James Redaway’s engraving after Samuel Prout, Bridge of Augustus at Narni 1830 (Tate, T06439) and Turner’s small pen-and-ink copy of a print after John ‘Warwick’ Smith in the Italian Guide Book sketchbook (Tate D13964; Turner Bequest CLXXII 18).