Joseph Mallord William Turner

This rugged landscape with its Stone (or Umbrella) pine trees and various buildings along the brow of the hill is highly reminiscent of a number of views by Thomas Jones (1742–1803) and Francis Towne (1739–1816) painted on the road to the Neapolitan monastery of Santa Maria dei Monti in 1781.1 This church can be found at the top of a winding road (present-day Via Santa Maria ai Monti) between Capodimonte and Capodichino to the north-east of the city. Compare for example Jones’s watercolour, In the Road to Santa Maria dei Monti, near Naples: Morning 1781 (Tate, T03367) which may depict the same domed building visible on the left of Turner’s sketch. The older Welsh artist had described the wild and ‘romantick’ country in this remote part of Naples as the embodiment of the work of Salvator Rosa (1615–1673).2 A similar type of scenery can be seen on folio 28 (D15962; Turner Bequest CLXXXVI 26).