The subject of this sketch is a large and ancient Mediterranean umbrella pine which stood in the gardens of the Colonna family on the slopes of the Quirinal Hill, adjacent to the Palazzo Colonna. Owing to its immense size and location it was known as the ‘Colonna Pine’, and it was a well-known attraction for English visitors to Rome, as described by Charlotte Eaton in Rome in the Nineteenth Century (1820):
The garden hangs on the steep side of the Quirinal Hill, on the summit of which the broken but massive fragments of an immense pediment of Parian marble, covered with finest sculpture, repose on the soft green turf, overshadowed by an ancient pine. It was just such a combination that a painter would have wished. It was more than picturesque. It was what his fancy could never have formed, but his taste must at once have selected.
1Like Tasso’s oak on the Janiculum Hill, the tree represented a popular subject for artists until the mid-nineteenth century when it was destroyed by a storm. Turner would probably have been familiar with two drawings by James Hakewill (1778–1843), his collaborator on
Picturesque Views in Italy in 1818.
2This drawing depicts a view of the tree with the casino of the Colonna gardens beyond. The ruined fragments in the foreground are blocks of marble from the Temple of Serapis built by Emperor Caracalla. Related sketches can be found on folios 28 and 28 verso (
D15157 and
D15158; Turner Bequest CLXXX 27 and 27a).
Nicola Moorby
November 2009
