The subject of this drawing is an interior view of the ruins of the Santuario di Ercole Vincitore (Sanctuary of Hercules Victor), a Roman ruin on the outskirts of Tivoli dating from the first century BC. Formerly known as the Villa of Maecenas, it is in fact a large temple complex dedicated to the cult of Hercules. The rough and dark nature of the sketch makes it difficult to identify the details but it probably represents the Via Tecta, a gallery or tunnel which carried the ancient Via Tiburtina beneath the substructures of the Santuario, and which was originally used for herding and selling livestock.
1 Part of it is still extant, although the surviving remnants of the temple have been much altered by industrial use of the site between the seventeenth and twentieth centuries.
2 Alternatively, the view may also depict the vaulted spaces of the interior above the gallery.
3 Visual precedents for the subject include etchings by Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720–1778) for the
Veduta di Roma,
4 and a watercolour by Louis Ducros (1748–1810),
The Stables of the Villa of Maecenas at Tivoli (Stourhead, The Hoare Collection, The National Trust).
5 Turner could have seen views by both artists in the collection of his early patron, Sir Richard Colt Hoare of Stourhead.
