Turner’s treatment of the Basilica of Constantine reflects his knowledge of the Italian engraver, Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720–1778), particularly the
Vedute di Roma, which Turner had studied as a young man in the collection of Sir Richard Colt Hoare at Stourhead. The close-up view of one of the great vaults, the compositional device of placing the Basilica diagonally to the picture plane, and the inclusion of figures and animals to enliven the design all recall Piranesi’s eighteenth-century etching,
Ruine des Speisesaals des Nero, sog. Tempio della Pace.
2 There is also some similarity with the Roman watercolour paintings of the Swiss artist, Louis Ducros (1748–1810), for example
Basilique de Maxence (Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne).
3 Like many pages within this sketchbook, the composition has been executed over a washed grey background. Turner first drew the outline in pencil before partially working up the view with watercolour, touches of white gouache and black pen-and-ink. Andrew Wilton has also suggested that the bright colouring and mixed media is a conscious imitation of the work of contemporary topographic and architectural draughtsmen such as Carlo Labruzzi (1748–1817) and Charles-Louis Clérisseau (1721–1820).
4 John Ruskin described it as a ‘noble study for its breadth of colour’.
5