Joseph Mallord William Turner

Palazzo della Rocella, Posillipo

1819

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Not on display

Artist
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Part of
Naples, Paestum and Rome Sketchbook
Medium
Graphite on paper
Dimensions
Support: 113 × 189 mm
Collection
Tate
Acquisition
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Reference
D16063
Turner Bequest CLXXXVI 78

Catalogue entry

The subject of this sketch is the Palazzo della Rocella, a seventeenth-century villa now known as the Villa Chierchia which stands on the shoreline to the west of Naples near the Palazzo Donna’Anna.1 Turner’s sketch looks east from a point near the Villa Emma, a small casino which had belonged to the antiquarian and diplomat, Sir William Hamilton (1731–1803), ambassador to the King of Naples (1764–1800) and husband of the celebrated beauty, Emma. The villa appears in context with the Palazzo Donn’Anna in a more detailed drawing within the Naples: Rome C. Studies sketchbook (Tate D16091; Turner Bequest CLXXXVII 4).
A small part of the composition with a distant view of Vesuvius spills over onto the opposite sheet of the double-page spread, see folio 79 verso (D16062; Turner Bequest CLXXXVI 77a).

Nicola Moorby
August 2010

1
The villa is now the headquarters of the Circolo Nautico Giovinezza (Youth Sailing Club). It can be seen in the distance in a watercolour by Abraham-Louis-Rodolphe Ducros (1747–1810), Posillipo seen from Palazzo Donn’Anna, Naples (Museum of San Martino), reproduced in Giuliano Briganti, Nicola Spinosa and Lindsay Stainton, In the Shadow of Vesuvius: Views of Naples from Baroque to Romanticism 1631–1830, exhibition catalogue, Accademia Italiana delle Arti e delle Arti Applicate, London 1990, p.89.

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