The Castel dell’Ovo, Naples, with Capri in the Distance

In addition to a wealth of pencil sketches of Naples, Turner made seven watercolour studies of the city during his 1819 Italian tour. Three of these feature the Castel dell’Ovo (Castle of the Egg), an historic fortress built on the islet of Megaride, a small piece of headland which juts into the sea in front of the port of Santa Lucia. The castle was one of the most ancient buildings in Naples, and its unusual name is said to derive from the legend of a magic egg hidden within the walls by the Latin poet, Virgil. So long as it remained intact, the egg would protect the castle and the entire city. The fortress frequently appears within panoramic views of the surrounding bay (see for example D16143; Turner Bequest CLXXXVII 55), but here Turner has adopted a more unusual visual approach. The view looks south-east from the foot of the hill of Pizzafalcone, with the squarish bulk of the castle in the central foreground.1 Silhouetted in the distance are the Bay of Sorrento and the eastern tip of the Gulf of Naples and, to the right, the island of Capri. There are two related coloured views within the same sketchbook (see D16089 and D16109; Turner Bequest CLXXXVII 2 and 21), as well as a further study of the distant promontory and island without the Castel dell’Ovo in the foreground (D16108; Turner Bequest CLXXXVII 20). All of these show the same motif at different times of day, and under varying weather conditions.

The study is unfinished but has been worked up to a fairly advanced level of detail. Turner has used loose wet washes to establish the basic composition of sea, sky and land, but has employed finer brushwork to describe the architectural structures, mountainous coastline and cloud formations. The textural qualities of the foreground trees and foliaged have been achieved with a dry brush technique and removal of paint to create trunks and branches. The clear limpid colours on pure white paper are intrinsically suited to the bright sunlight and Neapolitan subject matter.